Three Network Tidbits

1. RoadRunner Re-IP'd My Subnet: It happened in the middle of the night. I woke up this morning and nothing was working. This is the first time they (RR) have ever done this, at least as far as I can recall. So if you had any of the UT servers in your favorites list, those addresses are now obsolete. Select the servers from the UT browser and you'll be O.K.
   
   
2. I Still Hate ATI Drivers: But as it turns out, my UT crashes had nothing at all to do with them. The problem turned out to be an out-of-date (vintage 2007) RTL8139 NIC driver. Looking back, this should have been obvious because whenever the system crashed it made a horrendously load BUZZING SOUND, a sign that "something" was stomping all over the soundcard. Obvious because I've seen this issue at least a dozen times over the years. Both the soundcard and the NIC are built-in devices and both are manufactured by RealTek. I did an "update from the Internet" on the NIC and it found a driver from Feb. 2008. Things have been fine ever since. Too easy!
   
   
3. Marvell NICs Are Not Marvellous: In fact they suck major ass. In the early days of Experimental v1.0 I put a lot of time into making a wireless UT server using one of these pieces of dogshit. It was disastrous. That NIC ended up in my "other" Windows system, which among other things has a "secure" 802.11b dedicated point-to-point connection with a Webcam. That Windows box has been shitting itself for months, so on a lark I swapped out the Marvell NIC with a RaLink NIC and its incontinent days are over. The system is solid as a rock.