I wish they had tracked down someone from Nat Semi for this. I imagine they would have been somewhat dismayed by some of this.
One of the issues of the perceived low quality is the massive variance in NE2000 silicon. Basically everyone cloned/emulated the chip, but they have subtle variation, features, bugs. So a generic driver like Linux has to deal with a lot of damage.
The Intel PRO/100 NICs using the 82557, 82558, and 82559 controllers were a joy to work with on Windows. The NICs performed well and there was some backwards compatibility in the drivers. I have a vague memory of a lockup bug in some Linux driver versions that would knock machines off the network but it was eventually fixed.
I really enjoyed Intel's foray into networking in the late 90s. Their Ethernet hubs and switches were economical and reliable. It really made no sense for them to be in that market, and they ultimately ditched it, but I liked the simple and inexpensive gear.
The first chassis switch I ever used was the XLNT Millennium that Intel acquired and rebranded as the Intel "6000 Series". At a time when gigabit Ethernet was still exotic getting to play with one in a lab was a treat.
Aside: Videos like this leave me with this "Gee, I could've done that" feeling. It would probably be fun to divest myself of the old junk I have sitting around by way or making videos about the stuff before I liquidate it.
In this era 3Com was still the gold standard, but intel eventually dominated the market because they integrated 100mbit and then gigabit on the PCH relegating any margin in the expansion card market to servers. As someone that has worked on a lot of Intel drivers I always find Intel being put on a pedestal to be a little amusing, they have a tendency to make a lot of gaffes in silicon and sometimes these reappear in followup designs. It's certainly not bad, but I would place Intel networking about mid-tier historically and today.
Most realtek is F tier, they basically repeat the bad part of this NE2000 saga, and the simplicity comes at the cost of CPU cycles. In that sense the Intel PCH controllers were great.
The bug on Linux still exists today on this family (e100, e1000, e1000e). Maybe the root cause is different, but the solution is still to disable TCP segmentation offload and I suppose this is a firmware bug. At some point, Mellanox took over the "top" card segment for servers.
One of the issues of the perceived low quality is the massive variance in NE2000 silicon. Basically everyone cloned/emulated the chip, but they have subtle variation, features, bugs. So a generic driver like Linux has to deal with a lot of damage.
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