Well, I've noticed that the rtl8139 sometimes behaves oddly. For example, it'll send packets only very infrequently (meaning very low performance), or it'll hiccup and then come back to life.
I didn't investigate the problem very thoroughly, but was able to eliminate its odd behavior by the following: Try disabling its 'full-duplex' detection in the firmware. You'll have to use the card's setup program, which runs under dos. If that doesn't work, try to ramp the card down to 10Mbps in the firmware. Again, use the card's setup program. It may also be possible to use kernel command-line (if the rtl8139 driver is compiled in) or module-line (if not) parameters to disable full-duplex and to set the speed. However, these settings are given in bitfields (IIRC), and documented in the source code (8139too.c). Rather than dig around for source and start changing module parameters, I just popped in my handy-dandy network card setup boot disk and changed it there. It's important to note that the rtl8139 chipset is really not a whole lot better than the NE2000. Its chief advantage is that it's designed with PCI in mind, and is more suited to that architecture than NE2000. However, it's still a really, really cheap chipset, and don't expect too much from it. I've found it to be very unreliable at 100Mbps, and just forget about full-duplex (which is usually more trouble than it's worth, anyway, even with very expensive cards). If you are building a LTSP network from scratch, do avoid these cards unless you are completely impoverished. In which case, however, better these than the NE2000s. As a corollary, however: these cards are nice for small, non-critical networks (e.g., a home network) as they can be got for incredibly low prices (e.g., <25 $US ). -- Francis Avila ----- Original Message ----- From: "Manop Pornpeanvichanon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 04:56 Subject: [Ltsp-discuss] mount nfs root 4 min > > i have some error > > i at new dc (#4) > > it mount nfs root 3-4 min after that it goto xdm and ok for use > > it NIC is use RTL8139 (PCI) but when use > > it too slower then NE2000(ISA) > > how to i solve it? > > thank u. ------------------------------------------------------- Sponsored by: ThinkGeek at http://www.ThinkGeek.com/ _____________________________________________________________________ Ltsp-discuss mailing list. To un-subscribe, or change prefs, goto: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ltsp-discuss For additional LTSP help, try #ltsp channel on irc.openprojects.net
