Set the number of transmission attempts the Ethernet controller will make before giving up. The initial value is 8. 8 transmission attempts times the 200 ms default timeout equals a blocking delay of 1600 ms during a communications failure. You might prefer to set a lower number to make your program more responsive in the event something goes wrong with communications. Despite the name, this sets the total number of transmission attempts (not the number of retries after the first attempt fails) so the minimum value you would ever want to set is 1.
Ethernet.setRetransmissionCount(number)
Nothing
#include <SPI.h>
#include <Ethernet.h>
byte mac[] = {0xDE, 0xAD, 0xBE, 0xEF, 0xFE, 0xED};
IPAddress ip(10, 0, 0, 177);
void setup() {
Ethernet.begin(mac, ip);
Ethernet.setRetransmissionCount(1); // configure the Ethernet controller to only attempt one transmission before giving up
}
void loop () {}