Just a small tidbit for you:
I've tested out some of the native Ethernet samples in the Atmel driver package. Webserver, Telnet, both the LwIP and the UIP stack. With and without DHCP.
They all seem to work just fine, with no alterations
(You might have to adjust the IP though.)None of the samples supports 'connecting the wire after startup'. I suspect that you could solve this just by keep trying/searching though. (Or just resetting the board.)
The bad news is that the samples are rather obscure! Sadly. The ethernet driver + stack is a huge bunch of gotos and mile long functions. It's a miracle that they work. And it makes them rather difficult to manipulate I guess.
