Serious problems with USB and Ethernet on the Raspberry Pi

rephlex writes: The USB controller used in the Broadcom BCM2835 (which is the SoC the Raspberry Pi uses) has buggy drivers which have been causing problems for many of its users. In addition to this the Pi can only supply an unusually low amount of current to its USB devices, just 140 mA approximately, and using a powered hub to sidestep this limit exacerbates the issues caused by the USB drivers. Even Ethernet is affected as the Ethernet controller used on the Raspberry Pi is connected to the SoC via USB. This has resulted in packet loss and even total loss of network connectivity in certain situations, see https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/29. Attempts have been made in the past to fix the buggy USB drivers as there are other devices which use this problematic controller. None of these attempts seem to have achieved very much.