When using a DEC-21143 based ethernet card (de0) in a CATS plugged into a
full-duplex 100Mbit switch, then the system runs out of mbufs under light
network load. For instance trying to get a couple of machines to boot over
NFS will give "nfsd: send error 55" and "no buffer space available". At
this point networking dies. If a DEC-21140 based card is substituted, then
50-plus machines can be booted at once.

I originally discovered a problem with the DEC-2114x driver with a 1.3F
kernel on a CATS and was told it would go away if I used a later kernel.
Well, I've tried a 1.4M and the problem is identical. This problem has
been seen on three different sites with different ethernet cards, CATS
and switches.

Are there any comparable network cards fully supported on the CATS? Is
anyone looking at the DEC-2114x driver? Certainly the comments in the
-current source are not too reassuring:

 *   This driver supports the DEC DE435 or any other PCI
 *   board which support 21040, 21041, or 21140 (mostly).

Failing that does anyone know a source for 21140-based cards as I urgently
need to get this working?

-- 
Dr. Stephen Borrill