rl0: watchdog timeout

[Nico Meijer]

Hi Andrew,

Warning: no definitive answer ahead.

> After some time my realtek card becomes unresponsible. It happens
> because of buffer overflow. I tried ping -f xxx. 15 seconds later, the
> kernel says that rl0: watchdog timeout. I can't send files more then
> 100MB via network. This problem is because of my PC configuration -
> Motherboard GB K8N, chipset nforce 3. Unfortunately, even FreeBSD 5.3
> can't handle it (but it's better then 5.2.1). Maybe someone has
> already met this problem? Thank you!

I have no first hand experience with this particular problem, but it's
almost common knowledge RealTek nics are great because they are cheap,
not because they are of good quality. The phrase "piece of crap" has
been uttered more than once in relation to these nics.

Can you get your hands on any gigabit nics? (I've been using sk based
chips with OpenBSD lately and they've been performing great under all
circumstances so far.)

> P.S. Sorry for my english. :)

Don't be, it's fine.

Bye... Nico