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Date:      Thu, 23 Dec 1999 01:41:04 -0500 (EST)
From:      Bill Paul <wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
To:        dillon@apollo.backplane.com (Matthew Dillon)
Cc:        julian@whistle.com, scottm@CS.UCLA.EDU, jlemon@americantv.com, brad@shub-internet.org, jabley@patho.gen.nz, phk@critter.freebsd.dk, wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Woa!  May have found something - 'rl' driver and small packets (was Re: Odd TCP glitches in new currents)
Message-ID:  <199912230641.BAA10453@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199912230618.WAA16656@apollo.backplane.com> from "Matthew Dillon" at Dec 22, 99 10:18:56 pm

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Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, Matthew Dillon 
had to walk into mine and say:
 
>     I'm adding Bill Paul to the list specifically.
> 
>     Hmm.  Now this is odd!  I think I may have found something!
> 
>     All of my 'rl' driver cards fail this test:

Oh sure. Bet the farm on the absolute worst NIC on the whole damn planet,
why don't you. Why spend a few bucks on some nice 3c905B or 3c905C cards
and beat up on them when you can buy ten RealTek cards for a dollar. About
as reliable as a pair of tin cans and a piece of string, but gosh they
sure are cheap.

You'll have to wait until at least tomorrow before I can look into this,
since I won't be able to do any debugging until I throw my one and only
RealTek 8139 sample adapter into a machine and run some tests with it.

> 	rl0: <RealTek 8139 10/100BaseTX> irq 11 at device 3.0 on pci0
> 	rl0: Ethernet address: 00:50:ba:d1:89:05
> 	miibus0: <MII bus> on rl0

pciconf -l would be nice here too (to see the PCI revision code).
 
>     Methinks there is something going on with the 'rl' driver and/or
>     the RealTek cards!

Gee, y'think? I don't suppose you ran any similar tests with, say,
one of those LinkSys cards you had the other day. Or maybe a 3Com card.
I mean, it's just a little anti-climactic, you know? I put all that
blood, sweat and tears into if_xl and if_dc, but do people do stress
tests with them to help me identify weaknesses? No, they pound on
the house of cards that is if_rl.

*sigh*

-Bill

-- 
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul            (212) 854-6020 | System Manager, Master of Unix-Fu
Work:         wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research
Home:  wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City
=============================================================================
 "It is not I who am crazy; it is I who am mad!" - Ren Hoek, "Space Madness"
=============================================================================


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