nic 2.5 not working.

[kp206]

Hello everyone, I'm still a newbie and learning. And after installing pfSense 2.6.0 on bare metal, I noticed my Netgear CM2000 Modem "Multi GIG" display wasn't lighting up solid white anymore on my modem. But it was lighting up just fine on VMware ESXI 7 and pfSense. I looked into all the settings on pfsense and i can't figure out why the Multi Gig light is working. The Nic card in my system is the, "ipolex dual 1.25G intel I350-T2 Controller". Then i decided to buy another NIC Card on amazon, "IO CREST 2.5Gb Intel I225" thinking it would solve my problem with the modems Multi Gig light. And the light came back on, but pfsense doesn't see the new IO CREEST 2.5Gb Nic. I do see it in the system logs with errors.

1.How do i add the new 2.5gb nic card?

2.should i just return the 2.5 nic and try to fix settings on the 1.25gb nic?

Any help is much appreciated. Thank you.

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[stephenw10]

Presumably the 'multigig' LED on the modem only lights if it's linked at >1G. And that's on the LAN side?
If so you would need the 2.5G NIC to light it.
It looks like the igc driver in 2.6 doesn't support that card so you would need to either upgrade to 23.01 or to a 2.7dev snapshot to test it.

Steve

[JimBob Indiana]

@stephenw10 My Intel i225’s worked fine in 2.6. Have to disable stuff in the Advanced Network options. Or can use DEV 2.7 which improved the i225 support.

The options that need to be addressed are in the several threads on the i225 support matter.

I know nothing of the 350 card.

[stephenw10]

If the driver attaches but doesn't pass traffic then disabling options may allow it to. If it doesn't attach at all (as shown here) it's probably a newer hardware revision the 2.6 igc driver doesn't recognise.

@jimbob-indiana said in nic 2.5 not working.:

I know nothing of the 350 card.

Me either. Except that it's definitely not 1.25Gbps! Not sure what marketing genius decided to start using that.

[JimBob Indiana]

@stephenw10 Its the tcp off load, etc., stuff. If not disabled PFSense 2.6 didn’t recognize the card. There’s several threads on it.

[stephenw10]

Hmm, did I miss that? Just forgotten it?
Do you have a link?

[JimBob Indiana]

@stephenw10 Give me a sec……

I may be a version ahead of myself. Was it 2.5 that required the options and was fixed in 2.6?

I can’t post a link for some reason. The main thread is in Hardware and it 2.5gb as the title.

[stephenw10]

Topic ID? Like this one is 179646.

[kp206]

@stephenw10 The 'multi gig led lights turns on when it sense a 1gb link and its on the WAN side.

The thing is that its lights up when i plug my dell laptop via ethernet cat6 cable to the modem directly. Also the multi gig lite up on ESXi7 on pfSense, i don't get it, there was no hardware change at all, which is the confusing part.

I plan on upgrading my network switch in the near future, can you recommend any 10gb NIC cards that are 1000/2500/10000?

[stephenw10]

@kp206 said in nic 2.5 not working.:

The 'multi gig led lights turns on when it sense a 1gb link and its on the WAN side.

Oh, well then it makes no difference what pfSense does on the internal link then. It could just be coincidental that it appeared to change then.

[JimBob Indiana]

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/159994/intel-ethernet-controller-i225-lm-support/17?_=1682292195982

That’s one thread.

[JimBob Indiana]

Another:

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/166952/2-5-gbps-hardware/21?_=1682292195985

[stephenw10]

Hmm, OK this post certainly seems to imply the NICs were not recognised at all with hardware checksum offloading enabled. Though it's hard to see how that could possibly be since that setting only affects how NICs are configured and that can't happen if they're not recognised. Easy to test though.

[JimBob Indiana]

@stephenw10 That’s what happened when I first tried the 2.5 Intel NIC’s. Not found until was able to change the options, saved, booted, Intel cards found.

2.7 did not require the same option selections.

[Dobby_]

@kp206

It is an Intel i225-V adapter, but witch revision is it in real?
i225-V (version 1) - known problems
i225-V B2 (version 2) - known problems
i225-V B3 (version 3) - makes no problems

Intel i225-IT/AT - no problems
Intel i225-LM - no problems
Intel i226 - no problems, but support starts at pfSense 2.7

So be sure to not getting any problems you may install an
adapter (NIC) such as Intel i225-IT or i225-LM or if you try
out pfSense 2.7 you will also good sorted with an Intel i226
adapter.

[kp206]

@stephenw10 thank you for your help!!

[kp206]

@dobby_ Thanks, should i look on amazon or look into name OEM brands like, Dell, Lenovo or HP?

[tedquade]

@dobby_ I have an appliance with i225-V inbuilt components. Do you know of a method of determining the version (visual inspection, some application, etc.)?

Ted Quade

[stephenw10]

It's shown as the revision in the output of pciconf -lv:

[23.01-RELEASE][root@6100-3.stevew.lan]/root: pciconf -lv igc0
igc0@pci0:4:0:0:	class=0x020000 rev=0x03 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x15f3 subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x0000
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Ethernet Controller I225-V'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

[tedquade]

@stephenw10 I have version 1. Can someone point me to information about known problems so I can avoid bugging Pfsense / forum folks unnecessarily.

Ted Quade