I don't know if kernel 2.6.32 handles the RTL8111/RTL8168 correctly, so up to 2.6.30 it doesn't. If you look across the forum you'll see a lot of problems caused by the kernel built in driver.
I don't like vendor's drivers too, so I have to recognize that this driver solves problems without generating new ones. I compiled it for Debian Kernels 2.6.26 and 2.6.30 with no problems and the system is now working perfectly. I needed to do it because I was experiencing network hangs.
The driver seems to be actively developed and stable, and it's distributed under GPLv2.
If you test it, could you tell me the results, please?
Ethernet performance in Linux
Re: Gigabit Ethernet Performance?
Verified, kernel 2.6.32 does not support the RTL8111/RTL8168. Instead it loads the RTL8169 with a buggy behaivour.
Re: Gigabit Ethernet Performance?
I'm currently using Kernel 2.6.32.4 with the r8169 module. This is working without any reliabilty problem in 24/7 in a VLAN environment. The only bad point is the unexpected bad gigabit ethernet performance.
I changed from a monolithic kernel to the r8169 module an everything still works like before. When I switch to the r8168 by blacklisting the r8169 module, I have no network anymore. Moving the Fit-PC2 to an HDMI screen I see that the driver is loaded and eth0 is available as expected. Moving the box to my VLAN installation there is an ethernet link but I have no access to the box. Unfortunately I have no monitor in this installation, so I can't see what's going on here. I use the Realtek driver version r8168-8.016.00 and modified the make file add the CONFIG_R8168_VLAN flag.
If anybody think I will get gigabit performance with the Realtek driver, I will try to move a display with HDMI to this location and debug the problem. It would be bad if the Realtek driver still shows bad performance.
I changed from a monolithic kernel to the r8169 module an everything still works like before. When I switch to the r8168 by blacklisting the r8169 module, I have no network anymore. Moving the Fit-PC2 to an HDMI screen I see that the driver is loaded and eth0 is available as expected. Moving the box to my VLAN installation there is an ethernet link but I have no access to the box. Unfortunately I have no monitor in this installation, so I can't see what's going on here. I use the Realtek driver version r8168-8.016.00 and modified the make file add the CONFIG_R8168_VLAN flag.
If anybody think I will get gigabit performance with the Realtek driver, I will try to move a display with HDMI to this location and debug the problem. It would be bad if the Realtek driver still shows bad performance.