Many Series 2 TiVo's were not originally designed to connect over a network. The drivers are there, but they are old and may not work with newer adapters. Some generous hackers have compiled newer network drivers for the TiVo to use. This is just a general overview of how to do it with the most popular network adapters. More information and the files are available here.

You will need the appropriate ehci-dummy.o, usbcore.o, usbnet.o, and usb-ohci.o files for your TiVo. Backup the original files by establishing a telnet connection with your TiVo and entering these commands...

mount -o remount,rw /
mv /lib/modules/usbcore.o /lib/modules/usbcore.o.bak
mv /lib/modules/usb-ohci.o /lib/modules/usb-ohci.o.bak
mv /lib/modules/ehci-dummy.o /lib/modules/ehci-dummy.o.bak
mv /lib/modules/usbnet.o /lib/modules/usbnet.o.bak
mv /lib/modules/ax8817x.o /lib/modules/ax8817x.o.bak
mv /lib/modules/ehci-hcd.o /lib/modules/ehci-hcd.o.bak

Don't sweat it if you get some errors. The file probably just doesn't exist...yet.

FTP the backported drivers to the /lib/modules folder on the TiVo. Create symbolic links like so...

ln -sf usbnet.o ax8817x.o
ln -sf ehci-dummy.o ehci-hcd.o

That's it. Reboot the TiVo, and think happy thoughts. If everything goes ok, you should notice a significant network speed boost.