No drivers, no fiddly c library, TCP/IP support in Basic?
Want to send a byte - put it in $f40041, want to receive a byte? Check $f40043.
That's it. 

DHCP in hardware, TCP/IP in hardware, Ethernet in hardware. The wonders of FPGA development. 

The ethernet core used acts as a server. You can accept telnet clients, http clients or connect a proxy to the Merlin system and send your data out through that. Eventually I'll create a little c-program which will handle all that. To begin with though it just acts as a replacement console for me so I can connect from any computer rather than an attached serial connection and upload large gcc/newlib programs at ethernet speed.

Visit the guys at http://www.fpga-cores.com/ to see their other work.