[geeks] Opinion: RTL8169 vs. Intel PCI e1000?

[nate at portents.com]

On Mon, 3 Jan 2011 09:30:53 -0500, hike <mh1272 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Realteks have worked well but I have not used these with Linux, etc.
>  Only Windows OS.

As a point of reference, I've been using a first-gen Intel Atom D945GCLF
motherboard as my 24/7 home firewall (running pfSense, which is FreeBSD
based) for a couple of years now, and that has Realtek RTL8102EL 10/100
ethernet onboard (LAN ports are a quad gigabit PCI-X card with Broadcom
NICs).  I haven't seen any stability issues at all.  Can't really comment
on performance, since the Realtek is just handling a 5Mbit WAN connection. 
(Apparently Intel chose to use the Realtek because it's a single chip PCIe
MAC/PHY/EPROM device that needed just 48 pins, and all of Intel's NICs are
more complicated than that).

- Nate