On Oct 15, 2005, at 4:04 AM, James W. McKeand wrote:

> Jim Thompson wrote:
>
>> On Oct 14, 2005, at 2:54 PM, James W. McKeand wrote:
>> So, lets not be so quick to damn all that says "Realtek".
>>
>
> It may be a fine chipset with a good driver on Windows.

Of course, I referenced linux, which may be the same thing in your  
book, but

> It may be the FreeBSD 4.x driver. Do a quick search on the list  
> archive for realtek.
> There are many posts that state something like - "replaced Realtek  
> NICs
> and problem solved"

Hmm, I googled for "realtek m0n0wall", and the top thing is this:

http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:nHAT8enu05sJ:s1.m0n0.ch/wall/list/ 
%3Faction%3Dshow_msg%26actionargs%255B%255D%3D133%26actionargs%255B% 
255D%3D05+m0n0wall+realtek&hl=en&client=safari

"I've had a really good experience with these cards.  I've got two of  
them in
mono wall (and several in different windows machines) and have never  
had a
problem with them."

and also references this:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=880381+883631+/usr/local/ 
www/db/text/2005/freebsd-stable/20050123.freebsd-stable

which contains this "pull quote" from  sys/pci/if_rl.c

/*
  * The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
  * probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the  
possible
  * exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus- 
master
  * DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance
  * gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.


There are also several references to the board/box that Hacom sells,  
which the pfSense guys tested and found to be pretty OK.

So, yeah, maybe its the 4.11 driver, and maybe people just like to  
associate the name with lack of performance.

YMMV

jim