Network Device Driver development question

Hello,
I am new to embedded network device driver development. We are
developing a device driver for a network chipset and the
microcontroller is M16C based from Renesas. I have seen that most of
the device drivers use ring buffers. What are the benefits of using a
ring buffer. The chipset that we are working on has 14kb TXFIFO and
14kb RXFIFO. Would I have to use ring buffer in addition to these
FIFO's?. I am also keen on achieving the best performance with the
chipset. The chipset supports both DMA and PIO I/O modes. which mode
would be best?. The M16C microcontroller runs microItron based OS and
also has a TCP/IP stack. I would like to know from the guru's here what
standard guidelines I would have to follow for developing a network
device driver for embedded systems?

Thank you very much for your help!

.

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