On 2018-10-12, Aaron Mason <[email protected]> wrote: > Wow, never seen a multi-port Realtek NIC before.
I have but they're usually single NIC plus switch chip, looks like this is the real thing. > Maybe try the card on another motherboard and see if you get the same > symptoms. agreed if possible. > In any case, it's my understanding (and the maintainers of re(4) are > free to correct me on this) that Realtek NICs are usually a bad idea > for non-desktop applications, since they offload pretty much (if not > entirely) all of its functions to the OS - every time something > sneezes on the connected network, it raises an interrupt to the CPU. > This can lead to pretty craptacular performance and high CPU use under > heavy load. I can only imagine the hailstorm that would ensue if all > four of your NIC ports were running at full tilt. They're not the world's fastest NICs but the re(4) Realteks aren't *terrible* (and the driver is likely not as efficient as it could be.) rl(4) Realteks are *much* less good but people seem to apply Bill Paul's comments in *that* driver across to any nic made by the company... Also a ~5 year old celeron is not one to run 4xGbE full tilt in the first place (though it could be argued it will want any help it can get). > Your best bet for this would be a used quad-port Intel NIC, which can > be had for similar money (but not too much more) and is rather more > self-sufficient than the Realtek cards (and the maintainers of em(4) > are free to correct me there as well). You'll get better line > performance with less CPU stress. If the board has general problems with PCIE cards with bridges that might not fix the problem though. > On Thu, Oct 11, 2018 at 11:49 AM Martin Hanson ><[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Hi, I have one of these 4-port Realtek NIC cards: >> https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PCIe-PCI-Express-to-4x-Gigabit-Card-4-Port-Ethernet-Network-Adapter-10-100-1000M/252484240577?epid=505371101 >> I >> am running OpenBSD 6.3 stable. During boot the card is seen, but it only >> works occasionally. When it works I can see all the 4 ports using >> "ifconfig" and I can assign IP addresses etc. When it doesn't work >> nothing is shown using "ifconfig". As far as I understand from the "re" >> manpage RTL8168E/8111E is supported. This is my dmesg: >> http://paste.debian.net/1046756/ When >> the card isn't working I also get this: +ppb1 at pci1 dev 0 function 0 It is preferable to just include the whole dmesg directly in the mail Better still, when it's a "sometimes works" problem, include a "diff -u" between the two (the context to show where the lines are added/removed). "pcidump -vxx" in both states might be useful too. (Ideally without non-ascii characters in the mail :-) >> vendor "ASMedia", unknown product 0x1184 rev 0x00 >> +pci2 at ppb1 bus 2 >> +ppb2 at pci2 dev 1 function 0 vendor "ASMedia", unknown product 0x1184 >> rev 0x00: not configured by system firmware >> +ppb3 at pci2 dev 3 function 0 vendor "ASMedia", unknown product 0x1184 >> rev 0x00: not configured by system firmware >> +ppb4 at pci2 dev 5 function 0 vendor "ASMedia", unknown product 0x1184 >> rev 0x00: not configured by system firmware >> +ppb5 at pci2 dev 7 function 0 vendor "ASMedia", unknown product 0x1184 >> rev 0x00: not configured by system firmware >>  Is this a driver issue or something else perhaps? Kindest regards Very unlikely to be a problem with the NIC driver. From what I've seen (and having seen other examples of the quality of Jetway's BIOSes) my money would be on a BIOS bug. Can you identify any particular situations where it works or fails? For example "works after a cold boot but not warm" or something? Personally if I had to use this hardware as a router I'd use a single port card (which will probably work OK) and break the ports out on a managed switch via vlans instead.
