NBASE-T Support for Intel X550
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I knew that! :-)
Sorry, I should have rephrased that as “Flow Control appears to be working.” Rather than saying the NIC does not appear to be paused. Doh! ;-)
Any guess on when/if this could be addressed by Intel or someone else?
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No new information there I'm afraid.
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2.5/5G added to the kernel's ixgbe driver with this commit: https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/commit/sys/dev/ixgbe/ixgbe.h?id=d381c807510de2ebb453a563540bd17e344a2aab
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@brian-cunnie said in NBASE-T Support for Intel X550:
https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/commit/sys/dev/ixgbe/ixgbe.h?id=d381c807510de2ebb453a563540bd17e344a2aab
Any idea on approximately when this should show up in a pfsense RELEASE? Would I have to change anything?
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It's only in 13-stable right now so at the very least it would need either to brought into 12 stable or pfSense moved to 13 stable (or newer).
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@daplumber I don't have any idea when it would show up in a pfsense release.
Also, I've been struggling to get this to work on my non-pfsense straight-FreeBSD 13 firewall, and in spite of several attempts the Intel X550 negotiates a 1Gbe not 2.5Gbe connection. When I get it working I'll update the thread.
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@brian-cunnie I have found that the connection needs to be pretty clean. I use a Cat8 factory made cable. The chipset also runs pretty warm, I had to ensure good thermal grease and adequate air flow.
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Interesting. One of the big advantages of 2.5G is that it runs over cat5e. I've never had an issue using igc. Not tried an x550 though.
Steve
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@stephenw10 I know that’s the spec. I just had zero auto negotiation issues when I switched to a Cat8 cable, I went from Cat5 straight to Cat8 as they were weirdly cheaper at the time, so I skipped Cat5e, Cat6, and Cat7. I just wanted it to work. The other end is an Arris S33 Cable modem which I think is some kind of Broadcom chipset? I don’t know if different chipsets/drivers are better at auto-negotiating?
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Solution: the reason I've been having trouble getting my FreeBSD-based firewall running on an Atom C3000 SoC to negotiate 2.5Gbe with my Arris S33 modem is that the custom Intel 10G X550 on the SoC does not do NBASE-T—either you get 1Gbe or 10Gbe and nothing in between. Sigh.
On the bright side, I learned a lot about building the FreeBSD kernel and a reasonable amount about the
ixgbe
driver source code and about reading Intel datasheets. I must admit it was kind of fun.I'll revert to plugging the S33 & the firewall into a 1/2.5/5/10 switch, and that'll make it work. I was hoping for a direct connect, but that's not possible.
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@brian-cunnie Well that’s a bummer. I guess they simplified the network part on the SoC version. I didn’t even realize that existed!
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Hmm, X553 claims to support 2.5G, but not autonegotiate at that:
https://www.intel.co.uk/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/manuals/atom-c3000-family-programmer-reference-manual.pdf#G2.1229696I imagine the external components would also need to.
Steve
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@stephenw10 Good catch! I didn't realize that C3000 SoC X553 allows 2.5Gbe.
I hacked the
ixgbe
driver to allow 2.5Gbe for my card, ransudo ifconfig ix0 media 2500Base-T
to set it to 2.5Gbe, and then attached it to the Arris S33, but the carrier never came up, and I couldn't communicate with the Arris. -
Hmm, could be a number of things. You think your code hack was good though?
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@stephenw10 I would say I'm 80% confident my hack was correct. Here's the code diff:
--- a/sys/dev/ixgbe/if_ix.c +++ b/sys/dev/ixgbe/if_ix.c @@ -1286,7 +1286,8 @@ ixgbe_add_media_types(if_ctx_t ctx) if (layer & IXGBE_PHYSICAL_LAYER_10BASE_T) ifmedia_add(sc->media, IFM_ETHER | IFM_10_T, 0, NULL); - if (hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550) { + if (hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550 || + hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550EM_a) { ifmedia_add(sc->media, IFM_ETHER | IFM_2500_T, 0, NULL); ifmedia_add(sc->media, IFM_ETHER | IFM_5000_T, 0, NULL); } @@ -1438,8 +1439,6 @@ ixgbe_config_link(if_ctx_t ctx) * autonegotiation preferences and the default * set of speeds should exclude 2.5G and 5G. */ - autoneg &= ~(IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_2_5GB_FULL | - IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_5GB_FULL); } if (hw->mac.ops.setup_link) @@ -2265,7 +2264,8 @@ ixgbe_if_media_status(if_ctx_t ctx, struct ifmediareq * ifmr) ifmr->ifm_active |= IFM_10_T | IFM_FDX; break; } - if (hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550) + if (hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550 || + hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550EM_a) switch (sc->link_speed) { case IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_5GB_FULL: ifmr->ifm_active |= IFM_5000_T | IFM_FDX; @@ -4283,8 +4283,6 @@ ixgbe_get_default_advertise(struct ixgbe_softc *sc) * are disabled by default due to reported * interoperability issues with some switches. */ - link_caps &= ~(IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_2_5GB_FULL | - IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_5GB_FULL); } speed = --- a/sys/dev/ixgbe/ixgbe_x550.c +++ b/sys/dev/ixgbe/ixgbe_x550.c @@ -1945,6 +1945,8 @@ s32 ixgbe_get_link_capabilities_X550em(struct ixgbe_hw *hw, /* fall through */ default: *speed = IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_10GB_FULL | + IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_2_5GB_FULL | + IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_5GB_FULL | IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_1GB_FULL; break; }
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Mmm, well that doesn't look wrong.
But I couldn't tell you if that's all that's required there. -
@Brian-Cunnie I have an HPE Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 562T Adapter which is an Intel X550-T2 under the hood, and it was working at 2500Base-T in pre-2.7.0 pfSense releases (such as 2.6.0) as long as I left Speed and Duplex at "Default", because if I changed it to autoselect, I could not get link when connecting to a 2500Base-T device (such as a switch or cable modem). The caveat was that the speed would always show as "unknown" in pfSense, but when set to "Default" it would negotiate to 2500Base-T and I'd get 2.5Gbps performance despite the "unknown" speed.
pfSense 2.7.0 is not like that however. "Default" or "autoselect" now cause the link to negotiate to 1000Base-T but then the link drops, and re-negotiates to 1000Base-T, drops, over and over again every few seconds for the cable modem. I do see this warning in the pfSense UI: "MUST be set to autoselect (automatically negotiate speed) unless the port this interface connects to has its speed and duplex forced." I haven't tried forcing the cable modem as well as the ethernet card in pfSense to 2500Base-T at the same time, but I'm not sure it's worth it to me, I don't have a lot of 2500Base-T devices to fail over to if things go south with my pfSense config and this HPE Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 562T Adapter. So I've simply set the WAN interface to 1000Base-T for now, and plugged my LAN connection into a gigabit switch port.
Is there a dual 2.5Gbps PCIe ethernet card that will reliably auto-negotiate at 2500Base-T in pfSense 2.7.0?
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@nater
I have similar Dell card. On the latest Dell firmware and pfSense plus 23.05.1, which is very close to 2.7 I have had similar problems.
In my case I have dumb 2.5Gbit switch on one port and that caused the same issue with negotiation.
I have set the speed manually on the card/pfSense side to 2.5 and now it's working just fine. -
Is there a dual 2.5Gbps PCIe ethernet card that will reliably auto-negotiate at 2500Base-T in pfSense 2.7.0?
I don't know.
You're lucky: you must have the flavor of the X550-T2 card that includes the X550-BT2 chipset, which supports NBASE-T. The other flavor includes the X550-AT2 chipset, no NBASE-T.
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@Brian-Cunnie
From link you provided for x550-t2
333369-009 43
Intel Ethernet Controller X550 Datasheet
Introduction
1.5 Overview: New Capabilities Beyond the X540
1.5.1 NBASE-T Support
Support for 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T is added to the X550Also, there is revision description that states that support for NBASE-T was added in revision 2.0, so any card that bough from 2016 rev 2.0 supports NBASE.
Am I reading something wrong?