Realtek RTL8111GR streaming cache issues

[Beran Muden]

Hi all,

For about two years, I'm the proud owner of a self-build FreeNAS system.
My specs are the following:
Build: FreeNAS-9.10.1 (d989edd)
Platform: AMD Athlon(tm) 5350 APU with Radeon(tm) R3
Memory: 7587MB
Mainboard: ASRock AM1B-ITX
NIC: Realtek RTL8111GR
ShareType: SMB

After adding a Raspberry Pi 2 to my setup, I've been streaming music/movies/photos from my NAS quite happily. I do however have one rather annoying issue, that is when I want to stream HD content MKV files. Whenever the files get about 15gig or higher, the Realtek NIC seems to fail delivering the right amount of cache. I've did plenty of testing with above issue, including replacing cables, testing with a Windows SMB share, etc.

My final option, is the fact the Realtek driver on the FreeNAS side might not be up to the task.
Other posts about poor performing Realtek NICs is supporting this theory.
Now my guess is, is that I have two options at this point:
Either add an Intel NIC and disable the onboard Realtek, or update/tweak the FreeNAS Realtek driver.

Searching some other posts, I read it's possible to add a new NIC driver on the FreeNAS system.
With the right files, you could compile a new driver for the FreeNAS OS.
On the Realtek site, I've found updated drivers for the FreeBSD 7.x and 8.0 (2016/6/14).
Would this driver be suitable for compiling a new FreeNAS driver?
If so, could someone help me with the steps I should follow to achieve this? I'm mostly Windows minded, but I've got some experience on Linux as well. Compiling drivers is something new for me however.

Current ifconfig on the FreeNAS shows:
re0: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=82099<RXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC,LINKSTATE>
ether d0:50:99:12:aa:19
inet 192.168.1.105 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
inet6 fe80::d250:99ff:fe12:aa19%re0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
nd6 options=23<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,master>)
status: active

The new driver has these files, which I can easily transfer to the FreeNAS system.
- if_re.c
- if_rereg.h
- Makefile

Is this the right way to go? Or would my attempts be in vain? Are there any other options?
Advice would be most welcome, thanks in advance!

B.M.

 

[pirateghost]

Just get an Intel NIC. Don't waste your time trying to shoehorn anything realtek into your system.

 

[Mirfster]

Is this the right way to go? Or would my attempts be in vain? Are there any other options?

No - Yes - Intel NIC

 

[Beran Muden]

Thanks for the clear advice both!
I've already ordered the Intel/HP EXPI9301CT.

 

[joeschmuck]

I ran into the same type of issue years ago with FreeNAS and while I really promoted RealTek, it eventually just lacked proper driver support by FreeBSD. Things were fine in the early days of FreeNAS up until about 9.2x and I suspect the driver changed or didn't change when it should have. My solution was to buy an Intel NIC and that solved the problem immediately.

Note that when you install your new NIC, the interface will change from re0 to em0, or something like that. You may need to use the console to manually change the NIC setup so you can access the GUI.

 

[Beran Muden]

Received my NIC today, and built it in with great anticipation.

Everything finally works as it should. Configuring the NIC was easy-peasy, just needed to add the default gateway and reboot for my jails to work again.
No more buffering issues here. Thanks guys!!