Question: Why ain't I getting gigabit speed?

[John Nielsen]

On Feb 8, 2013, at 1:48 PM, Ronald F. Guilmette <rfg at tristatelogic.com> wrote:

> 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?

% ifconfig re0
re0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
	options=8209b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC,LINKSTATE>
	ether 00:1f:e2:55:1d:bc
	inet 67.182.217.170 netmask 0xfffffc00 broadcast 255.255.255.255 
	nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
	media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
	status: active

% dmesg | egrep '^re0:|^miibus0:|^rgephy0:'
re0: <RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E/F PCIe Gigabit Ethernet> port 0xd800-0xd8ff mem 0xfe9ff000-0xfe9fffff irq 17 at device 0.0 on pci2
re0: Using 1 MSI message
re0: Chip rev. 0x38000000
re0: MAC rev. 0x00400000
miibus0: <MII bus> on re0
rgephy0: <RTL8169S/8110S/8211 1000BASE-T media interface> PHY 1 on miibus0
rgephy0:  none, 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 10baseT-FDX-flow, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 100baseTX-FDX-flow, 1000baseT, 1000baseT-master, 1000baseT-FDX, 1000baseT-FDX-master, 1000baseT-FDX-flow, 1000baseT-FDX-flow-master, auto, auto-flow
re0: Ethernet address: 00:1f:e2:55:1d:bc


> 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.)

Agree with other followup--"master" shouldn't be applicable here; figure that out before you spend more time worrying about hardware. Would you mind posting a redacted version of /etc/rc.conf (and the contents of /etc/rc.conf.d, if any)?

> 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.)

Any log or kernel messages on either side when this happens?

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

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. It's not exactly a new driver and its author (Bill Paul) was quite experienced. It is possible you have a dodgy board though.

> 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.)

Most/all 1G NIC's in that price range will be Realtek. You may be able to find a Marvell/SysKonnect card for a bit more, but for not much more than that you can get something from Intel. You may get gigabit links from a cheap card but I wouldn't count on gigabit performance. (Actually any PCI card will fall short of gigabit performance.) If you actually care then spend the $30 on an Intel card.

JN