Slow network speed from F/N 9.1.1 autoselects 100baseTX Bug?

[Paul5]

Whilst trying to find out why I have slow transfers I noticed on boot up that F/N 9.1.1 auto
selects 100base, I confirmed via #ifconfig [my card] and the light at the nix card was orange indicating 100base, when I have 1000base card, switch, and computer with cat5e cables.

My card is an onboard one. Motherboard ASUS P5Q Pro and I've always had slow speeds even on the last version of F/N.

Now in my search I found this command:

# ifconfig [my card] [cards ip] media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex

Now this changed the card to 1000base but disconnected me from the network, so I went to shell and used this amongst others: [ifconfig network-interface up], non that I tried worked.

However, I also found and entered in the shell [/etc/rc.d/netif start] I got F/N back, and went from an average of 11.5 MB/s to 30MB/s starting at around 50MB/s three times faster, a 4.5GB file in just under 2 minutes :) On a side note, every *.iso transfered became invalid over the network when I tried to play them:( Just a permissions thing :)

So my forcing it to 1000bastTx works fine.

My questions are:

1- is this a bug with F/N - in not autoselecting 1000base when available?

2- I can manually change to 1000base as above but on reboot it goes back to 100base,
so how do I get it to permanently stick/force it or autoselect it, if it's not a bug. Since we can't edit any F/N files and I don't know which file/s to edit if I could.

3 - I'm assuming that [/etc/rc.d/netif start] is the right command to start up, for I get back F/N on the network. If I'm missing any other commands/scripts that should also be implemented please advise.

At the moment I placed those lines in a script for post int to make the change on every bootup but in doing so it makes me think that this is a bug with F/N taking the easy way out in possibly not taking enough time to prove the network.

4- Unrelated question: The boot up screen, what log file is it all written to for it's different to the console messages. I would never have found this if I hadn't been messing around and glancing at the monitor on boot up. I noticed 100baseTX out of the corner of my eye.

Any answers/confirmations?

 

[cyberjock]

If when you force 1000BaseTX it disconnects that means your cable or network switch isn't Gigabit compatible.

Considering that your board is listed on the Asus website as "PCIe Gb LAN controller featuring AI NET2" that's so vague as to be completely useless. Normally they'll list a manufacturer. Since they left off its easy to assume that you have what can only be considered a "bargain bin" NIC. You should be wary of any component that the manufacurer won't call out by brand and model.

As for it being a bug, it might be. But I'd guess it has more to do with your crappy NIC than a bug since nobody else has this issue except you.

As for a solution I recommend an Intel NIC. Any $20 Gb Intel NIC from ebay will work wonders for you. I have the CT and it works great.

Logging can be reviewed with the "dmesg" command.

 

[Paul5]

"If when you force 1000BaseTX it disconnects that means your cable or network switch isn't Gigabit compatible."

That's what I thought, but:
1-both computers say 1000baseTX and also the switch/router (terminology?) cables < 5M cat 5e
2-if I revert back to 100baseTX from the shell I still have to use [/etc/rc.d/netif start] not if I reboot
3-If it's not 1000baseTX compatible then why can I connect to the network and have 3 times the speed with the F/N nic indicating 1000baseTX.
4-As for it being just me, that is possible, however, I learned long ago not to just accept things otherwise I would have just accepted 11MB/s being new to all this I would not have known any difference, the movies still play over the network. Throw money at it, to day the nic, tomorrow the switch and and on, yeah that's possible but unless I can answer 1,2 and 3 what's the point? unless someone can tell that I'm going to get 70MB/s just by replacing the nic.

 

[cyberjock]

Well, we don't offer guarantees. If you want you can get a refund for your purchase price of FreeNAS. :P

But the short answer is that your NIC is very suspicious considering its a no-name brand by the manufacturer. It's probably a Realtek, which according to the driver notes "redefines the definition of low end". That's a big fat red flag in my book for "poor quality". If you don't want to fix it, that's fine. If I were in your shoes I'd go to Intel anyway as I've learned that pretty much all NICs that aren't Intel have a propensity to perform more slowly than Intel anyway. There's a reason why if you read my presentation(link in my sig) you'll see that we just recommend Intel out of habit because so many people waste their time on other stuff.

As for the cable, it should be an easy thing to try a spare to rule out the cable. They do go bad, so just because its relatively short and 5e doesn't mean anything.

 

[Paul5]

Well, we don't offer guarantees. If you want you can get a refund for your purchase price of FreeNAS. :p

But the short answer is that your NIC is very suspicious considering its a no-name brand by the manufacturer. It's probably a Realtek, which according to the driver notes "redefines the definition of low end". That's a big fat red flag in my book for "poor quality". If you don't want to fix it, that's fine. If I were in your shoes I'd go to Intel anyway as I've learned that pretty much all NICs that aren't Intel have a propensity to perform more slowly than Intel anyway. There's a reason why if you read my presentation(link in my sig) you'll see that we just recommend Intel out of habit because so many people waste their time on other stuff.

As for the cable, it should be an easy thing to try a spare to rule out the cable. They do go bad, so just because its relatively short and 5e doesn't mean anything.

Cool, so how do I get my $0,000.00 USD refund:) If only I could invoice F/N for the time. Cables are new.

Ok, don't take this to hart, but you are not giving me any information other than replace the nic. Buying one of ebay can take a week +, locally probably twice the price.

1-NIC Suspicious, how? that F/N connects it at 100base rather than 1000base, yet when forced it uses 1000base. F/N, Driver? when I run #ifconfig [my card] [cards ip] media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex. it changes over, to me that's software. I'm not disputing that an onboard NIC could be crap but if I can force 1000 then it may be a negotiation/handshake thing.
2- Perform more slowly, what is slowly? from what i've read 11MB/s for 100base seems the norm, for 1000 don't know. so what is the real world average for 1000. That would give me a reference point. If I'm already getting it by forcing it to 1G at around 30MB/s then it's just an issue of leaving my script in place on post init to do the change over.
3- I'm reluctant to just go out and by another card. What if the NIC is fine and the new one also is at 100b. So does that mean that its the motherboard, the switch/router because it can't be F/N. I'll then be told to replace the router/switch. Yes, you don't know until you try but do you see my point.

Without any reference points, such as real world average speeds expected or a command for example that will disable the loading of the nic until after boot up would help determine further fault finding. My issue is that I can manually connect at 1000b, if it was the NIC then it would reject any attempts to do so and fall back on 100.

Like I said don't take this to hart.

 

[pirateghost]

um....google says there are 8 bits to every byte.....its not some arbitrary number...there is math behind it.

so in ideal circumstance, 1gbps = 125MB/s

there is your goal

want the bad news? REALTEK does indeed suck on every level...it will connect, it might work properly for a while, and then it does something strange.... REALTEK is like this on every OS except Windows...go figure. It is NOT an issue with FreeNAS just deciding to change a setting, unless there is a problem with the driver it is using to communicate with the device. to just come out and say that your NIC is fine is asinine, because you can literally do a google search on REALTEK + FREEBSD or LINUX and you will find that they have the worst possible drivers for anything but windows....

if FreeNAS just decided to change nic settings it would happen across the board to everyone's systems...

so the problem lies within YOUR setup and is not with FreeNAS, but I will bet money that it is realtek's fault...

 

[jgreco]

1-NIC Suspicious, how? that F/N connects it at 100base rather than 1000base, yet when forced it uses 1000base. F/N, Driver? when I run #ifconfig [my card] [cards ip] media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex. it changes over, to me that's software. I'm not disputing that an onboard NIC could be crap but if I can force 1000 then it may be a negotiation/handshake thing.

3- I'm reluctant to just go out and by another card. What if the NIC is fine and the new one also is at 100b. So does that mean that its the motherboard, the switch/router because it can't be F/N. I'll then be told to replace the router/switch. Yes, you don't know until you try but do you see my point.

Okay, here's the deal.

We advise people to avoid the consumer-grade and usually even the prosumer-grade boards for a variety of reasons.

One of them is that their manufacturers have what we call "a list of features required to maintain the appearance of competitiveness." Things like "built in audio" and "built in network". But typically when they go down this list, they populate the selections with options that are the cheapest thing known to work with Windows.

Notice that I said "work", not "work well" ...

Many of the bargain-bin ethernet chipsets are barely acceptable for operation with Windows. They do slow and inefficient things, but because Windows doesn't push a network chip very hard, it isn't particularly noticeable. The manufacturers are just interested in selling chips so they hire some random coders to write a driver for Windows. Then, when the card becomes noticed in the FreeBSD and Linux communities, driver authors from those communities take up the challenge of making it work. It is not unusual for them to start with very little or even no technical information on the chipset. The manufacturers consider this to be their Confidential and Proprietary Information, because heaven forbid that someone else figure out how to make cheap ethernet chips...

Now compare and contrast:

Intel makes most system components. They have a significant interest in making quality hardware, because they want their servers to deliver as much performance as possible. So with an Intel ethernet chipset, the quality design begins with the chipset, which is typically a gradual evolution of existing proven designs, worked on by an experienced Intel engineering team that hasn't just been "hired for the summer". So the hardware usually ends up being very fully-featured, well-designed, AND also well-tested. But wait. That's not all. Because not only does Intel actually document how their chips work, they ALSO write the FreeBSD driver that supports their card. So not only do we NOT have some poor FreeBSD developer trying to guess at how the card works, the Intel team is actually writing a definitive driver that is EXPECTED to work correctly and which is supported by Intel.

So here's what you need to take away from all this:

We can't promise that your onboard Ethernet is bad. But we routinely see people come in who are having issues with off-brand Ethernet chipsets. Our first suggestion is always to replace it. Buy an inexpensive Intel desktop controller (usually around $30USD) which will be JUST FINE under FreeNAS even though it's a "desktop" controller. In almost all cases, this either clears up the problem, or maybe helps to reveal what the actual underlying problem is.

It is very likely that one of the hamsters responsible for moving bits around in your Realtek is injured or maybe dead.

(If you want to investigate some of the other instances we've seen, I have tagged a few of them with the word "hamster" or "hamsters" and you may search on that)

 

[Dusan]

It is very likely that one of the hamsters responsible for moving bits around in your Realtek is injured or maybe dead.

It seems the network chip in that board is actually Atheros AR821 and not Realtek, but still a very low end/buggy chip (e.g.: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hardware/2009-February/005760.html).

 

[jgreco]

The Atheros are known to be worse than Realtek. The Realtek driver's author didn't think such a thing was possible.

 

[gpsguy]

Do a Google search for: ASUS P5Q Pro NIC forum

You'll find a number of user's having NIC issues, even runnning Windows.

As jgreco just said, pick up an Intel Pro/1000 CT. You won't regret the purchase.

1-NIC Suspicious, how? that F/N connects it at 100base rather than 1000base, yet when forced it uses 1000base. F/N, Driver?

 

[cyberjock]

Cool, so how do I get my $0,000.00 USD refund:) If only I could invoice F/N for the time. Cables are new.

Ok, don't take this to hart, but you are not giving me any information other than replace the nic. Buying one of ebay can take a week +, locally probably twice the price.

1-NIC Suspicious, how? that F/N connects it at 100base rather than 1000base, yet when forced it uses 1000base. F/N, Driver? when I run #ifconfig [my card] [cards ip] media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex. it changes over, to me that's software. I'm not disputing that an onboard NIC could be crap but if I can force 1000 then it may be a negotiation/handshake thing.
2- Perform more slowly, what is slowly? from what i've read 11MB/s for 100base seems the norm, for 1000 don't know. so what is the real world average for 1000. That would give me a reference point. If I'm already getting it by forcing it to 1G at around 30MB/s then it's just an issue of leaving my script in place on post init to do the change over.
3- I'm reluctant to just go out and by another card. What if the NIC is fine and the new one also is at 100b. So does that mean that its the motherboard, the switch/router because it can't be F/N. I'll then be told to replace the router/switch. Yes, you don't know until you try but do you see my point.

Without any reference points, such as real world average speeds expected or a command for example that will disable the loading of the nic until after boot up would help determine further fault finding. My issue is that I can manually connect at 1000b, if it was the NIC then it would reject any attempts to do so and fall back on 100.

Like I said don't take this to hart.

How about you don't this to heart... :)

1. Anyone who read the FreeNAS forums about any kind of network issues and has a Realtek is usually told to upgrade to Intel. Probably 90% of problems go away with just that change. The remaining people have no clue how networking works, they have no concept of what a switch is, and generally probably shouldn't be playing with FreeNAS. A very small fraction actually have a problem that is even worth the time to post after having a NIC that is known to be superficial. Just search around the forums. 1/2 the threads that start with Realtek end with "and Intel had no problems".
2. Slowly is totally relative. There's a laundry list of things that can affect performance. I won't even start discussing them here, but the fact that you are limited to 8GB of RAM and that your CPU is at least 5 years old has a significant bearing on how fast you can expect to ever get. When you are CPU bound you can expect an Intel to increase speeds over an Realtek even if everything is working "fine".
3. I'm not sure how the "motherboard" could be directly limiting. It could be indirectly because its a very old socket 775 and is limited to 8GB of RAM which is the minimum recommended for FreeNAS. As for the switch router, you are fully capable of testing its capability. Take another machine and use the same cable and network port on the switch. In fact, the simple fact that you haven't made it clear that you've ruled those out tells me that you have very limited knowledge regarding networking.

Without any reference points, such as real world average speeds expected or a command for example that will disable the loading of the nic until after boot up would help determine further fault finding.

And what would that change? You can easily disable the NIC anytime... ifconfig re0 down. You can bring it back anytime too.. ifconfig re0 up. But you can't disable loading of the NIC because its a kernel driver I believe. It's a kernel driver for performance. You are welcome to recompile FreeNAS without the driver and play with it all you want. But from my perspective its not really worth my time as a volunteer to sit down and go through all of this when I have a pile of examples sky high that support my view that the NIC should go.

My issue is that I can manually connect at 1000b, if it was the NIC then it would reject any attempts to do so and fall back on 100.

Not true at all. Autosense tries to make the best decision it can. If it fails to get a good enough signal(again, more relative stuff based on the brand and model) it will force a step down. This does 2 things. It prevents potential excessive retransmits of data packets and will almost certainly alarm the admin to something being wrong and he can take the server down appropriately. What you don't want is a computer that constantly bumps back and forth between 100Mb and 1Gb. So the decision to have it auto step down is incredibly smart and very forward thinking.

By forcing Gb you are removing all of that smartness in the design. For all we know you have very very high retransmits and that's why when you force Gb you don't immediately get 100MB/sec. But you won't know until you try. You've never had 100MB/sec before and because its probably never actually worked right nobody knows what your system can do.

In any case, I'm done here. As a volunteer my time is only worth so much. The answer is pretty obvious, its cheap even if its wrong, and it at least rules out 1/3 of the possible problem. The other 2/3s you can do without the FreeNAS box.

I really wish you had gone and read other Realtek threads. Everyone that switches is happier for it and I might not have had to spend 45 minutes writing this response.

 

[Paul5]

Ok, thanks for the responses and I don't disagree as I have picked up quite a few things. This is where I stand at the moment, .

1 - I ended the transfer giving me 30MB/s and connected another computer, I then got 45MB/s computers are causing limiting due to there own issues I would say. 45MB/s I can live with that. Home use.

2 - I shutdown F/N box and loaded the only other Unix/Linux based thing I have left. A Clonezilla Live CD. I got 1000baseTX.

Yes, the NIC is of low quality. But it's doing the job, and if Clonzilla can pick it up, what does that say.

 

[cyberjock]

That says absolutely nothing. Linux =/= FreeBSD. And I'd argue it isn't doing its job based on your problem.

 

[jgreco]

But it's doing the job, and if Clonzilla can pick it up, what does that say.

It says you have shitty hardware that the Linux driver copes only marginally better with.

What does that say?

If you don't like our advice, feel free to not take it, but really you'll have to understand that my tolerance for clue-resistance is often not all that high, and that if you don't wish to accept the clues offered by five different knowledgeable forum members, I think I'll just unsubscribe and save myself the useless activity notifications.