Gigabit Nics

dragon · 22-09-2008, 19:26

I've got 2 Gigabit NICs based around the RTL 8169 Chipset.
1 is a Plexus branded one I bought form ebuyer a while ago
1 is a Pluscom branded one I bought from ebay

The Pluscom one seems to have trouble comminicating at 1Gbit, if its in the Server it Will switch into 1Gbit mode but then the transfers are appauling (20KB/s eww)

I swapped the NIC's around and tried it in my desktop where it would fallback to 100Mbit/s mode.

Plexus one worked fine in the server

I've tried different cables but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

I know the plexus one works fine as I used to use it to transfer stuff between 2 machines (the other machine had a NF4 Onboard NIC, That machine I no longer have)

I've tried various drivers including the latest from the Realtek site

Anyone got any ideas?

Desktop is a dell E520 running Vista x64
"server" Is A generic box running win2k3 R2 (Tyan Tiger Motherboard + 2 althon 1600+ MP cpus)

Forgot to say if I Force the Pluscom NIC to 100Mbit/s it's quite happy, but as soon as It tries to run in Gigabit mode It's just ususable.

---------- Post added at 19:26 ---------- Previous post was at 18:20 ----------

It appears that NIC doesn't like my Switch.

Plugged Them directly together Immediate Improvement (didn't have to use crossover cable either, they auto detected) Also Enabled me to turn on Jumbo Frames.

I've left them directly connected for now since they both have 2 NIC's anyway so all i've done is use the second NIC (10/100) to connect them to the rest of the Lan.

GoldenBoar · 02-10-2008, 11:43

What type of cables are you using (cat5, cat5e, or cat6)?

smee init · 02-10-2008, 21:44

Hi, what happens when you swap them round on the switch ports? Just asking because you might have a duff port or some of your ports on the switch might need setting up i.e 1st three ports might have been set to 100Mb and the rest at 1 Gb, cables should really be cat 6 also try changing settings to full duplex if your switch will allow it.

dragon · 02-10-2008, 22:19

cat5e minimum I did have a short length of cat6 I tried.

The switch is a simple 8 port home/small office jobbie so unmanaged I can't set the port speeds on the switch.

I know the port works fine as the other gigabit NIC will talk fine to the network using it as will my macbook and so did the Previous machine I used to have on that port (Had an x2 3800+ as the nas/server but the motherboard was dieing on it)

Currently My network is only 100Mbit's as I've moved everything around and I don't have a long enough cable to direct link those 2 machines together.

I might try it again and see if it behaves this time, wouldn't be due to the cable Length at all would it? I was using Short patch cables (under 2Meteres mostly) I know the maximum is 100M but is there a minimum lengh at all?

Don't know why that NIC doesn't like the switch but it doesn't as I said earlier it barely beats a 56k modem for transfer speeds, Force it into 100Mbit/s Full duplex and it's perfectly happy will hit that no problem.

smee init · 02-10-2008, 22:31

No smaller the cable the better, and if the switch is not an old one i.e hub as people can get confused then it will act as a direct link thats what switches do hubs send info to all ports in use so either its your switch that only runs at 100Mbits or your NIC and it did come from ebay so probably not new is it? Does the plexus one run at 1000?

dragon · 02-10-2008, 22:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by smee init

No smaller the cable the better, and if the switch is not an old one i.e hub as people can get confused then it will act as a direct link thats what switches do hubs send info to all ports in use so either its your switch that only runs at 100Mbits or your NIC and it did come from ebay so probably not new is it? Does the plexus one run at 1000?

Yes.

It was new it was a buy it now, came in a sealed box I know the card can work at 1000Mbit since it does it fine if I wire both of them directly togther btw they are auto sensing since they don't care if its crossover between them or not.

The Switch is defiantly a switch, Hub's aren't that easy to get thesedays and I've not seen one that works at gigabit.

It's definatly ok with running some ports at Gigabit and some at 100Mbit/s since it's been doing that since day1

Not sure it's a chipset issue since both the plexus and pluscom cards have the same Realtek chipset.

Nic in the "Sever" machine will often Auto negotiate 1Gbit/s but transfers are so slow its unusable, If I manually switch it to 100 Full duplex in the properties it works fine @ 100Mbit/s

I swapped the NIC's over and when it was in my desktop it would only Auto Negotiate 100Mbit/s if I tried to force it to 1Gbit it would simply drop the connection altogether.

Slightly different drivers on the desktop as it run vista x64 where as the other machine is running win 2k3 r2

It's either the NIC itself or something about it doesn't like that switch, I'm not that bothered with it at the moment I may eventually get around to replacing that NIC with a different one to see if it solves the problem (IT wasn't expensive)