Quoting Jon Pennington ([EMAIL PROTECTED]):

> > > > I was wondering if there is a speed/operating difference when compiling
> > > > kernel daemons like knfs static in the kernel or in modules. 

> It depends on what you're talking about.  Take, for instance, the Intel 
> EtherExpressPro100 (eepro100) network card.  Loading it as a module on a 
> HEAVILY laden web server exposed a major weakness in the overall robustness 
> of the card.  The card started dropping packets and causing collisions under 
> only 50% of what the interface would have been capable of if it were built-in 
> to the kernel.

That's quite remarkable to me. Does the kernel have any responsibility
to handle collisions and such? That seem highly unlikely. Perhaps they
manage to produce such a card and call it a WinNIC :)

I've found a major advantage of running NICs from modules is that
if you *do* get a problem in the driver ("Infinite loop in interrupt"
comes to mind), you just down the network, reload the module and up
it again. (You could even do this automatically.)

Cheers,

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