ax88790 chipset 100mbit/s support

[dvc at jtxa.de]

Henry Miller wrote:
> On 12/9/2004 at 02:25 dvc at jtxa.de wrote:
> 
> 
>>hello,
>>
>>i have a 10/100 fast ethernet pccard labeled "sitecom".
>>it is built around the asix ax88790 chipset and runs 
>>at 10 mbit using the ed driver.
>>
>>is 10 mbit/sec the maximum transfer rate the ed driver 
>>supports? 
>>
>>does somebody know a way i can use this card at 100
>>mbit/sec on my freebsd-5.3-release system?
>>
>>the dmesg output for ed0:
>>
>>ed0: <PCMCIA FastEthernet> at port 0x300-0x31f irq 5 
>>function 0 config 7 on pccard1
>>ed0: [GIANT-LOCKED]
>>ed0: Ethernet address: 00:10:60:f5:e1:12
>>ed0: if_start running deferred for Giant
>>
>>uname -a:
>>
>>FreeBSD host1 5.3-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE #2:
>>Wed Dec  1 17:01:58 CET 2004     root at host1:/usr/src/sys
>>/i386/compile/NEU  i386
>>
>>ifconfig ed0:
>>
>>ed0: flags=108843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
>>       inet 192.168.1.20 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
>>       inet6 fe80::210:60ff:fef5:e112%ed0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3 
>>       ether 00:10:60:f5:e1:12
>>
>>thanks,
>>
> 

thanks for your reply.

> 
> Are you sure this card is really running at 10Mbit/s?  

it takes more than 10 seconds to transfer a 10-megabyte-file.
testing the transfer speed with /usr/ports/net/netstrain shows
transfer rates of 950 K/s for receiving and 1350 K/s for sending data.

Are you sure
> your hub/switch supports 100 MBit/s?  

yes.

Do you have any 10Mbs only
> devices on the network?  (some hubs will not allow two different
> speeds)  Are you sure your wires are all cat-5, with all wires
> connected (iirc 10baseT uses less wires than 100), and good.  (I've
> seen mice eat previously working cables, depending on the exact damage
> done the cable may still work at 10)
> 
> Are you sure this card supports the same protocol as your hub?  Back
> when 100 megabit ethernet first came out there were several different
> incompatible protocols.   Most of those cards would step down to 10mbs
> if they couldn't agree on a protocol.   (as I recall the hardware
> engineers said about the auto speed select abilities is that the good
> news is it worked, and the two end points were able to agree on a
> common speed.  The bad news is you are now running  at 10Mbs)  This
> situation settled down quickly, but if this card/hub combination has
> never been working at 100Mbs, it might be an issue you are having.  
> 
> I'm focusing on hardware, because that is a common issue.  It could be
> FreeBSD, but often it isn't.
> 
> 


i have used this card on this laptop on three different 10/100 mbit lans,
always using the same cat 5 cables as the other hosts.
transferring data on these networks with other hosts works at the typical 
100mbit transfer rates of 7-9 megabytes/sec. thus, i assume i can exclude 
the possibilty of a hardware problem outside of my computer.

martin