2.5 Gbps Hardware

stephenw10

There is an Aquantia driver but it's not included in pfSense. You need to load the FreeBSD module but there is now a pkg for that. There have been mixed reports, for example:
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/166522/tx401-support.

Steve

iprowell

@stephenw10 thanks for the info. Those are the sort of results I am not very interested in dealing with. I ended up buying a QNAP i225 based card. It went into the system last night, was recognized by 2.5.2, linked up to my modem at 2.5 Gbps, and everything seems to be happy.

jsmiddleton4

@iprowell said in 2.5 Gbps Hardware:

QNAP i225 based card. It went into the system last night, was recognized by 2.5.2, linked up to my modem at 2.5 Gbps, and everything seems to be happy.

Just double checking. I'm interested in building a PC with 2.5gb to WAN and LAN. Have a very nice older i5 with 3 pci-e slots that'd be a perfect PFSENSE router. Not doing anything fancy. Just want to build a basic home router with 2.5gb to match my ISP speed.

I have read the threads here, REDDIT, etc., on PFSense and 2.5gbe PCI-E NIC support. And of course have gotten myself confused.

Checking my understanding. As quoted the latest PFSENSE by default supports the Intel based 2.5? The i225 chipset?

stephenw10

The igc driver is included in 2.5.2, yes. Because of the release timing it missed a hardware checksum fix that is in 2.6 snapshots but you can just disable hardware checksum offloading.

I have not personally tested anything other than the i225 NIC we use in the 6100 but there are several reports of success such as the one above.

Steve

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10 said in 2.5 Gbps Hardware:

disable hardware checksum offloading.

I'm assuming that's an option I can set via LAN IP interface in the software?

Some reason not to use the .6 snapshot?

stephenw10

There's a global setting for it in Sys > Adv > Networking.

Current 2.6 snapshots are pretty stable, I'm aware of any major issues. I have several instances running here. But that is the dev branch, new snapshots may introduce issues. So if you choose to run 2.6 you should not upgrade to every new snapshot if stability is an issue.
Or course the more people who can run a 2.6 test box and report problems the better.

Steve

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10

Thanks. While I’m not adverse to playing with new releases, use RMerlins Beta’s on my AX86U, two family work from home so it has to be stable.

It’ll be end of week I’m going to have a chance to play.

iprowell

@stephenw10 I checked and I already had hardware checksum offloading disabled. Should I disable that when 2.6 is released? I have the i225 for WAN and a x520-da2 for LAN in the system. Thanks for all the support!

-Ian

jsmiddleton4

This post is deleted!

stephenw10

@iprowell said in 2.5 Gbps Hardware:

Should I disable that when 2.6 is released?

I assume you mean enable it, if you already have it disabled?

Yes, you could enable it in 2.6 but there is almost advantage in doing so. I would leave it disabled.

Steve

jsmiddleton4

Figured out bios options, etc., for the install to be recognized as a bootable drive. Worked. Install obviously installed.

Initial configuration did not work. I'm using version 2.6.0 which does not recognize the Intel I-225 NIC's are present. I tested everything with Windows 10 before blasting everything with the PFSENSE install. All worked, 2.5gb cards recognized, etc.

What am I missing? Is there some option I'm supposed to go to the manual screen and enter something to download and install the drivers for the 2.5gb cards?

stephenw10

Can you complete the install with other NICs?

If so do that and then at the command line run: pciconf -lv.

You should see the igc NIC listed there. If the driver failed to attach they will be shown as 'none' bit you will be able to see the PCI devices IDs your card is using.

The boot log may also contain errors if/when the driver tries to attach.

Steve

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10 Thanks for getting back to me Was at family dinner. I only have one non 2.5gb card. Won’t it choke once again thinking it needs to config a WAN and LAN?

It isn’t expensive to pick up another 1gb PCI-e card if needed

I’m booting right now with every LAN port attached.

Not sure but that might have been it. Each LAN port needed something plugged into it.

Edit: Was able to get through configuration, am able to log in via web interface. The Intel 2.5Gbe cards nowhere to be found though. PCICONFIG -LV shows the cards and “none”.

jsmiddleton4

@jsmiddleton4

Had to disable the check sum thing. Once disabled, booted, Intel cards found.

Also I have to keep the 1gb built in LAN active. Its assigned to “Opt 2”. Might use it to a 1gb NAS directly instead of going through a switch.

I though 2.6 didn’t need that setting disabled?

I might go back to 2.5.2.

stephenw10

You only need one recognized NIC to complete the install, just WAN.

Setting checksum disabled would have no effect on the driver attaching to the NICs initially. It only does anything once they are up and linked. Something else is happening there.
Are you saying that if you remove the 1G NIC the others are then not detected again?

What is the output of pciconf? What PCI IDs are the devices on that card?

Steve

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10

Good morning.

I am using 2.6.0. Updated something this morning. 2.5.2 said the 2.5gb NIC's were 1gb.... went back to 2.6.0.

Yes, if I remove the 1gb NIC from the mix the 2.5gbe ones are no longer "attached" to a driver. It is the built in LAN port of the Dell 390 Minitower.

Consistent behavior is if I don't disable the checksum box, the 2.5gbe cards are not attached or become unattached if they were attached. I am not able to explain it. But that's what happens.

I have it working. So PCICONF is correct now showing attached. Folks using the network so I can't easily run PCICONF at the moment.

I have three 2.5gbe NIC's. One is for the WAN. One goes to the ASUS AX86U 2.5gbe port which is in AP mode. One goes to other home office and 2.5gbe clients. The other office, where' I'm sitting, connected directly to the PFSENSE router, not through the AP. The AP mostly for wireless. Although any 1 gb clients are hanging off its LAN ports.

I'm getting 1300+mbs via Fast.com on PC's in the "other" office. So the connection is more than 1gbs.

I had to bridge the NIC's. I could have created a separate DHCP pool, gateway, etc., I suppose. Was just as easy to bridge the NIC's. Once bridged the DHCP server/DNS stuff worked for all attached clients.

If I do a power down of the PC with PFSENSE, it loses the config for the 2.5gb NIC's and I have to add interfaces again.

I had a problem with the WAN working but I couldn't connect to the internet with any clients. I had to update a couple of firewall rules according to what I found in this forum. Did and was able to connect to WAN with all clients except its just IPV4. I can't get IPV6 going. Searching on that now.

At this moment I'm on, obviously, from the "other" office via 2.5gb. Two family members on in their office including VOIP.

For those two since they connect to company VPN speeds are throttled by their VPN. Me however everything is WAY faster, snappy. The PC based router faster than the Asus AX86U.

Sorry if I'm a bit scattered. I can not play during work hours for my family members. I got up quite early so I could try setting things up.

And of course I'm doing things the hard way.

stephenw10

@jsmiddleton4 said in 2.5 Gbps Hardware:

I'm getting 1300+mbs via Fast.com

Nice! I can only dream of that here.

When you bridged the NICs did you assign the bridge and put the DHCP server on that?
If not you might hit the issue where if the interface with it enabled is disconnected everything else in the bridge will fail.

So if you power cycle pfSense it boots back up to the interfaces assign screen?
But not if you just reboot?
That starts to sound like some low-level issue. Is the BIOS current on that box?

You can run pciconf -lv any time. It just reads the devices, it doesn't anything. My edge device for example:

[2.5.2-RELEASE][admin@pfsense.fire.box]/root: pciconf -lv
hostb0@pci0:0:0:0:	class=0x060000 card=0x04101106 chip=0x04101106 rev=0x80 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series Host Bridge: Host Control'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
hostb1@pci0:0:0:1:	class=0x060000 card=0x14101106 chip=0x14101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series Error Reporting'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
hostb2@pci0:0:0:2:	class=0x060000 card=0x24101106 chip=0x24101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series CPU Bus Controller'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
hostb3@pci0:0:0:3:	class=0x060000 card=0x34101106 chip=0x34101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series DRAM Bus Control'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
hostb4@pci0:0:0:4:	class=0x060000 card=0x44101106 chip=0x44101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series Power Management and Chip Testing Control'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
hostb5@pci0:0:0:5:	class=0x060000 card=0x54101106 chip=0x54101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series APIC and Central Traffic Control'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
hostb6@pci0:0:0:6:	class=0x060000 card=0x64101106 chip=0x64101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series Scratch Registers'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
hostb7@pci0:0:0:7:	class=0x060000 card=0x74101106 chip=0x74101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series North-South Module Interface Control'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
vgapci0@pci0:0:1:0:	class=0x030000 card=0x71221106 chip=0x71221106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Graphics [Chrome9 HD]'
    class      = display
    subclass   = VGA
pcib1@pci0:0:3:0:	class=0x060400 card=0xa4101106 chip=0xa4101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x01
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series PCI Express Root Port 0'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = PCI-PCI
pcib2@pci0:0:3:1:	class=0x060400 card=0xb4101106 chip=0xb4101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x01
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series PCI Express Root Port 1'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = PCI-PCI
pcib3@pci0:0:3:2:	class=0x060400 card=0xc4101106 chip=0xc4101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x01
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series PCI Express Root Port 2'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = PCI-PCI
pcib4@pci0:0:3:3:	class=0x060400 card=0xd4101106 chip=0xd4101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x01
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series PCI Express Root Port 3'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = PCI-PCI
hostb8@pci0:0:3:4:	class=0x060000 card=0x00000000 chip=0xe4101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series PCI Express Physical Layer Electrical Sub-block'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
none0@pci0:0:11:0:	class=0x028000 card=0xa4091106 chip=0xa4091106 rev=0x10 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX855/VX875/VX900 Series USB Device Controller'
    class      = network
sdhci_pci0@pci0:0:12:0:	class=0x080501 card=0x95d01106 chip=0x95d01106 rev=0x10 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX800/820/900 Series SDIO Host Controller'
    class      = base peripheral
    subclass   = SD host controller
none1@pci0:0:13:0:	class=0x050100 card=0x95301106 chip=0x95301106 rev=0x61 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX800/820/900 Series Secure Digital Memory Card Controller'
    class      = memory
    subclass   = flash
atapci0@pci0:0:15:0:	class=0x01018f card=0x90011106 chip=0x90011106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series Serial-ATA Controller'
    class      = mass storage
    subclass   = ATA
uhci0@pci0:0:16:0:	class=0x0c0300 card=0x30381106 chip=0x30381106 rev=0xa0 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VT82xx/62xx/VX700/8x0/900 UHCI USB 1.1 Controller'
    class      = serial bus
    subclass   = USB
uhci1@pci0:0:16:1:	class=0x0c0300 card=0x30381106 chip=0x30381106 rev=0xa0 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VT82xx/62xx/VX700/8x0/900 UHCI USB 1.1 Controller'
    class      = serial bus
    subclass   = USB
uhci2@pci0:0:16:2:	class=0x0c0300 card=0x30381106 chip=0x30381106 rev=0xa0 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VT82xx/62xx/VX700/8x0/900 UHCI USB 1.1 Controller'
    class      = serial bus
    subclass   = USB
uhci3@pci0:0:16:3:	class=0x0c0300 card=0x30381106 chip=0x30381106 rev=0xa0 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VT82xx/62xx/VX700/8x0/900 UHCI USB 1.1 Controller'
    class      = serial bus
    subclass   = USB
ehci0@pci0:0:16:4:	class=0x0c0320 card=0x31041106 chip=0x31041106 rev=0x90 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'USB 2.0 EHCI-Compliant Host-Controller'
    class      = serial bus
    subclass   = USB
isab0@pci0:0:17:0:	class=0x060100 card=0x84101106 chip=0x84101106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX900 Series Bus Control and Power Management'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = PCI-ISA
hostb9@pci0:0:17:7:	class=0x060000 card=0xa3531106 chip=0xa3531106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX8xx/900 Series South-North Module Interface Control'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = HOST-PCI
pcib5@pci0:0:19:0:	class=0x060401 card=0xb3531106 chip=0xb3531106 rev=0x00 hdr=0x01
    vendor     = 'VIA Technologies, Inc.'
    device     = 'VX855/VX875/VX900 PCI to PCI Bridge'
    class      = bridge
    subclass   = PCI-PCI
igb0@pci0:1:0:0:	class=0x020000 card=0x000015bb chip=0x15108086 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = '82580 Gigabit Backplane Connection'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
igb1@pci0:1:0:1:	class=0x020000 card=0x000015bb chip=0x15108086 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = '82580 Gigabit Backplane Connection'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

Steve

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10

Bios current. A14. Updated yesterday.

I’ve totally snarfed everything trying to get IPV6 to work.

Had to reinstall 2.6 and now I can’t get it to accept a DHCP range for the server. Keeps telling me I’m trying to use ranges that are outside the subnet. When they are the same numbers as I had working before.

Had to pull the PC server out and go back to just router setup. I can’t have family mbrs down.

stephenw10

If it says the range is outside the subnet then it is. Perhaps you changed the subnet and didn't apply that change?

We'd have to see screenshots to speculate further.

That's not a 2.5G NIC issue though. You should open a new thread for that.

Steve

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10

Cleared it by booting.

I'm still majorly stuck on IPV6.

I think I have DNS stuff sorted.

I've been at this too long today. Thanks for all your help. I'm reading through the trouble shooting FAQ's on the pfsense forum. Problem is there's so many options I can't remember what I changed to make it work, to make it not work, etc.