>I have dozens of m0n0walls and full-blown servers with RealTek cards
>and, while I *always* recommend Intel NICs, the RTL8139s that come with
>the motherboards sometimes have actually done pretty well when hooked up
>to internet connections, wifi APs, etc.

>Lee Sharp wrote:
>> From: "Aaron with Morad" <aaronc at morad dot ab dot ca>
>>
>>> "the Realtek cards sucks!"
>>
>>> Haha... I agree.
>>
>> While we are testifying about hardware... :-)  I have at least 25
>> Realtek cards in production on m0n0wall with no problems.  They are
>> slow, but not as slow as the internet connection.  However, I am
>> running them all in well ventilated cases, and with good power
>> supplies.  Heat and bad power supplies cause more problems than
>> realtek nics.

With all of this I must confess, I do have three other m0n0walls running 
Realtek NICs just fine - these other m0n0walls serve other routing purposes 
in our network.  It just seems to be the two units for the ISP side of our 
business that have given me trouble (one operational and the other a 
warm-standby).  These would be the heaviest used out of the bunch.  I 
suppose I should have changed out the memory and CF card in the process of 
elimination but with all of the talk (before this thread) regarding the 
performance of the Realtek NICs I thought it would be easier to complain 
(haha, sorry) and change out the box for an Intel config.  The units I 
pulled out will still be used, perhaps with new RAM and CF cards this time, 
and maybe somewhere less critical to start with...



Aaron