as someone who has written a tcp/ip stack* as well as overlaying protocols such as DHCP, for 8-bit micros (AVR/PIC), the answer is ???yes, its extremely hard to use???. its also much more expensive than you???d think, after all the ???extras??? necessary for the chip/phy to work, and/or requires soldering of very fine-pitch parts. $28 for a do-it-all plug-in module with all the nonsense is a good