Well, I have kind of the opposite problem
I'm involved with these guys: www.violasystems.com so I use their nifty little box for the ethernet part.

Neat. They seem a lot more powerful than the Cypress PSoC chip I'm using. The fact they've got ethernet already working is a bonus

Well it's especially the "preset dim" stuff that is driving me crazy. Or *any* way to *reliably* dim up from 0 to a *pre-defined* amount.

Preset dim is actually obsolete. It's been replaced by the direct dim extended command. Nothing really apart from the DIN rail lamp modules understands direct dim or even preset dim however. The normal modules only support the basic command set so you're kind of stuck if you're using those. You have to do the turn-on-and-dim-down-in-successive-commands trick.