Call for testers: Atheros AR8121(L1E)/AR8113/AR8114(L2E) ethernet

[Pyun YongHyeon]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 03:42:16PM +0100, albri wrote:
 > hello,
 > 
 > I have issues transfering big or many files over ethernet on 1000H, also.
 > Using yongari's ale(4) driver
 > http://people.freebsd.org/~yongari/ale/ale.20081114.tar.gz I did not
 > have any problems while I surf or download 37MB sourcecode from inet.
 > Then scp(1)'ing source from 1000H to desktop PC showed a transfer rate
 > with maximum 86kB/s regardless to which direction is copied. The
 > ethernet NIC, while copying, is switched off regularily then. No
 > copies possible after three megabytes.

Try turning off TSO and let me know how it goes.
("#ifconfig ale0 -tso" will do the job.)

 > Next try was a big file. A packed tarball from the source-tree was
 > copied via nc(1) using TCP-protocol. After 7 until 17MB no transfer
 > possible and same symptoms like above.
 > 
 > One way I can reproduce this is the following:
 > on desktop PC: $> nc -4nl 1234 > bigfile.tar.gz
 > on 1000H: $> nc -4n 192.x.x.x 1234 < bigfile.tar.gz
 > It makes no difference wether I am a user or root. Tested over a
 > switch and a crossover cable.
 > Does anybody has a hint?
 > 
 > best regards.
 > 
 > - attachments:
 > As this is my first post, I try to attach my kernelconfig and two
 > sysctl dev.ale.0 (before and after error).
 > 
 > - dmesg shows:
 > 1 ale0: <Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 PCIe Ethernet> port
 > 0xec00-0xec7f mem 0x    fbfc0000-0xfbffffff irq 17 at device 0.0 on
 > pci3
 > 2 ale0: 960 Tx FIFO, 1024 Rx FIFO
 > 3 ale0: Using 1 MSI messages.
 > 4 miibus0: <MII bus> on ale0
 > 5 ale0: Ethernet address: 00:23:54:xx:xx:xx
 > 6 ale0: [FILTER]
 > 7 ale0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
 > 8 ale0: link state changed to UP
 > 9 ale0: DMA read error! -- resetting
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This would be major reason why you're getting poor performance.

 > 10 ale0: could not disable Tx/Rx MAC(0x00000008)!
 > 11 ale0: link state changed to DOWN
 > 12 ale0: link state changed to UP
 > 13 ale0: link state changed to DOWN
 > 14 ale0: link state changed to UP
 > 15 [..] 20 times
 > 16 ale0: DMA read error! -- resetting
 > 17 ale0: could not disable Tx/Rx MAC(0x00000008)!
 > 18 ale0: link state changed to DOWN
 > 19 ale0: link state changed to UP
 > 
 > - ifconfig shows:
 > 1 ale0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
 > 2    options=319b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4>

It seems that your hardware doesn't have WOL capability. But I
guess EeePC 1000H does support WOL. You've disabled some
functionality of ethernet controller in BIOS?

 > 3    ether 00:23:54:xx:xx:xx
 > 4    inet 192.168.xxx.xxx netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.xxx.255
 > 5    media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
 > 6    status: active
 > 

-- 
Regards,
Pyun YongHyeon