Issue with 7.0-RELEASE and Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 12:21:48PM +0200, Lukas Razik wrote:
> Hello Jeremy!
>
> Jeremy Chadwick schrieb:
>> On Mon, Aug 11, 2008 at 01:55:30PM -0700, Jeremy Chadwick wrote:
>>
>>> But in this day and age, one of the best SATA controllers for FreeBSD is
>>> an Areca controller.  They're somewhat expensive (comparatively), but
>>> the performance is apparently stunning, combined with decent FreeBSD
>>> drivers that utilise CAM and da(4) (yes, despite the disks being SATA).
>>> Every time people mention them on the lists, the response is the same:
>>> amazing performance, and really good driver + administrative support
>>> (e.g. software administrative utilities).
>>>
>>> I do wish Areca made a less expensive controller with less features,
>>> intended for "tech-savvy" consumer use, in the US$125 or less price
>>> range.
>>
>>
>> And it appears they now do: the ARC-1200.  PCIe x1, has 2 ports, and
>> on-board cache.  It lacks an IOP, so the performance won't be that of
>> one of the more expensive cards.  Either way, quite good for 2-disk
>> servers:
>>
>> http://www.areca.com.tw/products/2ports.htm
>>
>> Cost is ~US$175.  A little steep, but the on-board cache supposedly
>> justifies it (IMHO, barely).  Hopefully the price will come down to
>> US$100-125, which would be perfect.
>>
>
> Ooops, I haven't seen your eMail when I wrote you the last some minutes  
> ago... :-)
>
> I know this controller (as I wrote you) for some days now. Here in  
> Germany I've only seen one Online-Shop where this controller is listed.
> If the HighPoint RocketRAID 3120 (100EUR =~ 150USD) isn't as good as I  
> hope, then I will test the Areca ARC-1200 (140EUR =~ 210USD).

I've stayed away from HighPoint since the release of their HPT366 and
HPT370/372 chips, which were horrible.  That said, *please* let me
know how their RocketRAID products perform and behave under FreeBSD.
I'm interested to know if they've learned from past mistakes.

> But you wrote "It lacks an IOP [...]". Do you mean that it will have no  
> Intel IOP because they only write it has a "500MHz Storage processor"  
> and therefore it will be not as fast as the other controllers from Areca?

Correct.  I'm lead to believe that the ambiguous "500Mhz Storage
processor" item refers to a non-Intel processor of some sort.

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                       http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                  Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.              PGP: 4BD6C0CB |