Question: Why ain't I getting gigabit speed?

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <F03C262C-E798-4062-8B17-59F045ADB82D at jnielsen.net>, 
John Nielsen <john at jnielsen.net> wrote:

>On Feb 7, 2013, at 4:13 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg at tristatelogic.com> =
>wrote:
>
>> I just aquired a brand new chepie gigabit PCI ethernet card off eBay.
>> The main chip on it appears to be an RTL8110S-32.
>>...

>I would suspect the switch ("router"). FYI:
>http://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?f=3D11&t=3D47421#p213242
>
>I have an re interface on my FreeBSD router and it connects at 1000baseT =
>no problem.

Could you please send or post the relevant ifconfig printout for that,
and also the applicable/relevant dmesg lines?

This problem is very perplexing, but I don't think that the problem
is with my Linksys E2000.

I did some more experiments.  Fortunately, I had a CAT6 crossover cable
lying around.  So I used that and connected my machine with the RTL8110S-32
in it directly to two other machines with gigabit interfaces.  One was
my other server.  The other was a laptop I have here.  The results were
very strange.

In the case of connecting to the laptop, all seemed to work correctly,
however ifconfig showed that my re0 device in this case believed itself
to be "master".  (I suspect that this may make a difference, and that
the current FreeBSD re driver may perhaps behave better when it is
acting as master.)

In the case of connecting (via CAT6 crossover) direct to my other server,
things got even more strange.  In this case, after making the connection,
autonegotiation apparently worked correctly, and I could see "1000baseT"
in the output from "ifconfig re0", *however* a moment or two later,
suddenly the connection was entirely dropped, and now the ifconfig
output said "no carrier".  I reproduced this sequence multiple times.
It is readily reproducable.  (The other server is running FreeBSD 8.3-
RELEASE with an on-motherboard Nvidia gigabit ethernet interface, BTW.)

I am inclined to wonder if perhaps the re driver has some rough edges
still.


Regards,
rfg


P.S.  Since this card is really not working out for me, has anybody got
a suggestion and/or link they could send me for an _inexpensive_ gigabit
PCI nic that works reliably with FreeBSD?  (I am hoping for something under
$12 USD.)