Issue with 7.0-RELEASE and Realtek RTL8168/8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC

[Lukas Razik]

Hello!

>>I'm happy to see that it could work with the newest 7.0-STABLE tree because I 
>>don't want to buy a new NIC which works with FreeBSD.
> 
> 
> Be aware that Realtek NICs have a history of being incredibly buggy and
> having very odd engineering design flaws.  I go to great lengths to
> avoid them on motherboards; I agree an OS should work with it, but based
> on the pain I've seen Yong-Hyeon (driver maintainer) go through when it
> comes to hardware revisions or general oddities, I often cringe at the
> idea of using a Realtek NIC in any environment I have control over.
> (I've blogged about how Realtek more or less dominates the consumer
> market with their NIC/PHYs, which is quite scary considering the bugs
> even in their Windows drivers.)
> 
> I am very, very thankful we have an active rl(4) and re(4) driver
> maintainer, though.  :-)

I know that there are better NICs (in the past I had some from Intel) 
but the system is only for personal use and I don't need a "optimal 
working" Ethernet network, so the onboard RTL NICs should be enough for 
my purposes...


>>I use FreeBSD for 90% 
>>(for some years now) and therefore I also bought a 3ware 8006-2LP Hardware-
>>RAID controller and will buy a second HighPoint 3120 HW-RAID controller (which 
>>is less expensive) because I had bad experiences with the Fake- (or 
>>Pseudo-)RAID controllers like the "normal" onboard controllers and others 
>>(Promise FastTrak 4310 etc.).
> 
> 
> I have a tendency to like Intel (and occasionally nVidia, but highly
> prefer Intel) ICH controllers simply because Intel has fantastic product
> errata, and the ICH controllers have performed quite well over the
> years.  They're also used on server hardware (read: Supermicro).
> 
> But in this day and age, one of the best SATA controllers for FreeBSD is
> an Areca controller.  They're somewhat expensive (comparatively), but
> the performance is apparently stunning, combined with decent FreeBSD
> drivers that utilise CAM and da(4) (yes, despite the disks being SATA).
> Every time people mention them on the lists, the response is the same:
> amazing performance, and really good driver + administrative support
> (e.g. software administrative utilities).
> 
> I do wish Areca made a less expensive controller with less features,
> intended for "tech-savvy" consumer use, in the US$125 or less price
> range.

I've read about the Areca (aka Tekram?) controllers and the good support 
by FreeBSD but as I told you, I have a 3ware controller and I'me _very_ 
happy with it. But now I need a second one (with PCIe x1 and two SATA 
ports) for RAID1 because it seems as if the RAID-functionallity of my 
onboard ICH9R controller isn't supported by FreeBSD and Linux but I want 
to do further testing...

I've looked for such an Areca HW-RAID controller some days ago because 
of my bad experiences with the Fake-RAID controllers in the past and 
I've found the new Areca ARC-1200:
http://www.areca.com.tw/products/2ports.htm
but here in Germany it's with ~140EUR even more expensive than the 3ware 
9650SE-2LP which is listed for ~130EUR:
http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata2-9650.asp

Then I've seen that HighPoint doesn't produce only cheap Fake-RAID cards 
but also the HighPoint RocketRAID 3120 HW-RAID controller which is 
listed for only ~100EUR and which ostensibly has a good Linux/FreeBSD 
support.
If I will not be able to get the ICH9R working stable with FreeBSD and 
Linux, then I will buy the HighPoint 3120. If it works good and I have 
the time then I'll benchmark it against the 3ware 8006-2LP under FreeBSD...


>>Now I also have troubles with FreeBSD and the ICH9R SATA-controller
>>and it's RAID functionality.
> 
> 
> I'm not surprised.  FreeBSD's Intel MatrixRAID support is very
> dangerous, I would not recommend using it if your data matters.  There
> are a few PRs which contain patches that address some of the concerns,
> but out-of-the-box, I'd recommend avoiding Intel MatrixRAID on FreeBSD.
> 

Then I can save my time... :-)
Thanks for your answer with all information!

Regards,
Lukas