amd64/108861: nve(4) driver on FreeBSD 6.2 AMD64 does not work at 1Gbps with nForce4 NIC

[Lawrence Stewart]

The following reply was made to PR amd64/108861; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Lawrence Stewart <lstewart at room52.net>
To: Scot Hetzel <swhetzel at gmail.com>
Cc: freebsd-gnats-submit at freebsd.org
Subject: Re: amd64/108861: nve(4) driver on FreeBSD 6.2 AMD64 does not work
 at 1Gbps with nForce4 NIC
Date: Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:05:14 +1100

 Hi Scot,
 
 Thanks for the reply.
 
 Scot Hetzel wrote:
 > On 2/6/07, Lawrence Stewart <lstewart at room52.net> wrote:
 >> I could not find a fix for the problem.
 >>
 >> I also could not figure out why explicitly setting the NIC to sync at 
 >> 100baseTX full-duplex made the NIC work, but only at a fraction of 
 >> 100Mbps capacity.
 >>
 >> A work around is to cause the switch port the NIC is plugged into to 
 >> only allow 100baseTX, so that the NIC will autoselect at 100baseTX 
 >> and work at reasonable speed. You could also do as I did and stick 
 >> small 100baseTX switch in between the machine and gigabit switch.
 >>
 > Have you tried forcing the switch switch and the NIC to 1000baseT Full 
 > Duplex?
 >
 > Sometime times auto-negotiation fails, so forcing speed should fix it.
 >
 I don't have access to the actual Cisco switches, as they are maintained 
 by our IT services department. Forcibly setting the switch to 1000 Mbps 
 is kind of besides the point anyway. The problem is that when the NIC is 
 autosensing (default state) and plugged into an autonegotiating 1 Gbps 
 switch port (default for all switches I've ever worked with), the driver 
 appears to be functional for all intensive purposes, except for the fact 
 that no packets can be accessed. That is confusing for the user and is 
 the major problem with the nve(4) driver in its current state. Having to 
 put a call into the IT dept and trying to explain that you need them to 
 manually set the sync speed on a port is unlikely to be well received... 
 it's also simply another work around, rather than a fix.
 
 Regards,
 Lawrence Stewart