5.3-Stable network issue

[Freddie Cash]

> I seem to have been having a rather strange networking issue in
> FreeBSD 5.3-Stable (it started happening immediately after 5.2.1 and
> has persisted since.. I keep ³hoping² that next time I cvsup it will
> be fixed, but no).

> I downgraded back to 5.2.1-p13 and it is perfectly fine once again.

> *** Some background information:

> My FreeBSD box is my home NAT router, server, firewall, etc. It does
> DHCP, MX for some of my domains, secondary DNS (I got primary
> elsewhere), apache for some webhosting, blah blah blah. Nothing
> really special. It is a Dual PIII-500, 512mb ram, and a couple ATA
> hdd¹s. Had 3 realtek network interfaces, but down to 2 now.

Any chance of using non-RealTek cards?  They are notorious for
performing poorly at the best of times.

My laptop has one of these internally, and every now and then it'll
drop the connection.  Usually with an error about an oversize frame
being discarded.  An "ifconfig down" "ifconfig up" will fix the issue.

Enabling polling support (either via the kernel config option
DEVICE_POLLING or the sysctl) helps some.

The best solution, though, is to get better NICs.

For run, read the man page for rl(4) and the comments in the rl
source.  Quite enlightening about the "issues" the RealTek chipsets
have.  :)


-- 
Freddie Cash, CCNT CCLP        Helpdesk / Network Support Tech.
School District 73             (250) 377-HELP [377-4357]
fcash-ml at sd73.bc.ca