@Water_my_lawn: no, the buffer is not the issue. The actual ether_buffer is 2x the size of ETHER_BUFFER_SIZE:
https://github.com/OpenSprinkler/OpenSprinkler-Firmware/blob/dev/219-5/main.cpp#L67
and all client.read is constrained to read maximum of ETHER_BUFFER_SIZE number of characters. Even in previous versions of the code, the buffer’s actual size is ETHER_BUFFER_SIZE+TMP_BUFFER_SIZE (which is 256). So I don’t think there is buffer overflow.