I am evaluating servers for a backbone monitoring project, primarily
concerned with throughput analysis.

During the evaluation the supplier ran out of "server A" (Celeron 1.3GHz)
and began suppling "server B" (Celeron 1.7GHz)

Server "A" 
- Celeron 1.3GHz, 
- 512M- PC133
- Motherboard - MSI 6368-140 -VIA VT8601 chipset
- RealTek 8100L 10/100 BaseT

Server "B"
- Celeron 1.7GHz
- 512M - DDR266
- Motherboard - GA-8LD533(-P) - Intel 845GL chipset
- RealTek 8101L

Performance testing the servers on a closed 100Mbit test environment,
revealed that server "B" was much slower on outgoing file transfers and also
very unstable.

Both servers were otherwise identical, Redhat 8.0, minimal installs,default
drivers. 
Server "A" detected the chip as a RTL-8139B with the 0.9.25 Fast Ethernet
driver
Server "B" detected the chip as a RTL-8139C with the driver being the 0.9.26
Fast Ethernet driver.

My testing revealed that Server "A" consistently transferred outgoing
packets @ 9600 KB/sec. There was very little variance, perhaps 20KB/sec.
Server "B's" maximum output transfer rate was between only 8600 KB/sec and
7200 KB/sec and varied with every test. No consistancy at  all. Both
achieved an input transfer rate of approx. 11000KB/sec, and were fairly
constant.

I tried the 1.5.0 version driver from ShuChen Shao, but there was no change.

Is there an optimized driver for this chip, or should I be looking elsewhere
to solve this problem?

Robert R. Fitzgibbons
Mgr. Element Systems Integration
Network Support Systems
Rogers Cable
Toronto, Canada
333 Bloor Street East