The video mentions that drivers were needed to get the full speed on Windows, and that the Realtek Linux drivers didn't compile on a modern kernel. So it's probably software.
Realtek makes some pretty affordable networking chips but their Linux drivers can be a real gamble. Either it works out of the box or you're in for years of messing around.
> Realtek makes some pretty affordable networking chips but their Linux drivers can be a real gamble. Either it works out of the box or you're in for years of messing around.
And that's when it's a legitimate Realtek chip. Many years ago, I bought a 100M Realtek Ethernet card, expecting it to work out of the box on Linux; but it was actually a counterfeit, using a Silan chip instead of a Realtek chip, and the out-of-tree Linux driver (for Linux 2.4) that came with it on the CD was actually a driver for the Silan chip with the numbers filed off. I ended up writing and submitting a Linux 2.6 driver for it, just to make people stop blaming the Realtek driver for not working with the unrelated Silan chip.
The video mentions that drivers were needed to get the full speed on Windows, and that the Realtek Linux drivers didn't compile on a modern kernel. So it's probably software.
Realtek makes some pretty affordable networking chips but their Linux drivers can be a real gamble. Either it works out of the box or you're in for years of messing around.
> Realtek makes some pretty affordable networking chips but their Linux drivers can be a real gamble. Either it works out of the box or you're in for years of messing around.
And that's when it's a legitimate Realtek chip. Many years ago, I bought a 100M Realtek Ethernet card, expecting it to work out of the box on Linux; but it was actually a counterfeit, using a Silan chip instead of a Realtek chip, and the out-of-tree Linux driver (for Linux 2.4) that came with it on the CD was actually a driver for the Silan chip with the numbers filed off. I ended up writing and submitting a Linux 2.6 driver for it, just to make people stop blaming the Realtek driver for not working with the unrelated Silan chip.