A little history:
A few years ago, VMware suggested that all ESX Linux guests standardize on the pcnet32 driver. Then, shortly afterward, a vmxnet driver was released which was supposed to be faster. We all dutifully migrated.
When x86_64 VMs became supported, we were told to migrate again to e1000.
And recently, ESX 3.5U2 unveiled a new "enhanced vmxnet" driver. I've been investigating for a few months the benefits of switching, and indeed found that the new driver seemed to perform better and have fewer bugs.
So, it was no surprise to me when I read today in the vmware communities that VMware is pushing a migration to enhanced vmxnet:
