I am just starting out with the Arduino. I want to get an ethernet board, but I am not sure which one is the best.
I like the idea of DHCP, so the Xport one seems to be good. I saw something on adafruit that said that the Xport was old and that the WIZnet was newer. I would assume that either one would be fine. I just was wondering if anyone has an ideas.
Thanks,
-John
Depends on what you need to do.
The official shield will have the easiest integration, since the software is part of the standard distribution with version 0012. I am not familiar with the libraries provided by the third party makers, so I can't comment on their software.
Different hardware provides different levels of functionality. The Wiznet device on the official shield provides functionality up to network layer 4 (TCP, UDP). I think the XPort provides a bit more integration than that. The shields based on the Microchip device (ENC26J80?) only provide layer 2 (ethernet) in hardware, so more software resources on the arduino are required for typical TCP or UDP communication. My understanding is that the libraries provide the software; the cost to you is less code space, less RAM, and less processing capacity. This may be just fine for your application (I don't usually max out the CPU time in my Arduino applications anyway).
While it is true the official shield does not yet have DHCP support, I suspect some enterprising individual will come up with that before too long (just my conjecture, there). Someone has already submitted UDP support.
-j
I've just received my Nuelectronics Ethernet Shielf V1.0, based on the ENC28J60.
I've got it running a mini web server with the given code examples. But I'd really like to run Firmata on it. But i'm guessing that isn't possible with this shield?
The limitations are not necessarily with the shield or the ENC28j60. The Arduino is very limited in memory space (from the perspective of what is needed by the TCP/IP STACK) You would even have trouble if you programmed it in straight AVRGCC with just an AVR168.