Modify Intel X540-T2 NIC To Work At 2.5GbE ?

[Gertjan]

@panzerscope

If the specs say "10GbE/1GbE/100Mb", it would be a commercial disaster if they "forgot" to mention "and also 2,5 Gbits/sec", as these days, more and more ISPs can deliver a bit more then 1 Gbits/sec, so an exception was made in the 1-10-100-1000-10000 Mbis/sec speed range : 2,5 was born as a real "10 Gbits/sec" is, imho, impossible to make.
That said, yes, I know they exist, but light (photons actually) traveled a bit more then one foot (35 cm ?) during the clock pulse of a 10 Gbits sec connection. Anyway ^^

More technical : if a NIC supports the speed X then hardware needs to be designed to accept that speed, like crystals, shift registers, analog line drivers etc etc. It isn't a 'flip a secret bit' and it should work.

So, you wanted to see it being capable of doing 2.5 Gbit .... I wouldn't except it (because 'you' told me so).

I hope to be wrong of course.

[stephenw10]

Possibly via a firmware up or down grade or using Intels NIC nvm tool? Though I'm not aware of anything specific for that NIC. The X550 is the only NIC I know will link at multigig speeds, 2.5G & 5G.

Edit: Looks like the hardware will not support it. So it's X550 or one of the 2.5G specific NICs (i225/i226).

[Gertjan]

@stephenw10

The NIC was created in the "first quarter of 2012". 2,5 Gbits wasn't a thing back then ?!
( ok, true, I didn't check this edit : but there is this - but I do recall that I had to rack up a huge amounts of € for my first 1 Gbit 24 port switch and that was back then (2011) the biggest and best )

[w0w]

@panzerscope
If you have some switch with at least two 10gbe ports that supports Nbase-T then you can put it in between. X550-T2 can be also painful wnen you try it with Nbase-T. There was a long thread on Intel forums about it, works sometimes with some firmware under some OSes thats all you need to know about it.
You can also search servethehome for some switch like this - Mikrotik
You can also buy i226v card and this will run 2.5Gbe out of the box. There are a lot of them coming from China.

[Bob.Dig]

@stephenw10 said in Modify Intel X540-T2 NIC To Work At 2.5GbE ?:

The X550 is the only NIC I know will link at multigig speeds, 2.5G & 5G.

I think all the newer cards do it too, like aquantia etc.
Realtek has 5 Gbit and probably soon 10 Gbit which also do the steps in between.

[stephenw10]

Yup, sorry Intel NIC I should say. And when running in pfSense.

[w0w]

@stephenw10
My X550-T2 doesn’t work properly with the 2.5GbE dumb switches I have — either there's no carrier or it only connects at 1Gbps. One day I got tired of it and just bought the cheapest 10Gbe TP-Link dumb switch I could find.

[panzerscope]

Thanks for the comments guys.

I have decided to purchase an X550-T2 which I will update to the latest firmware prior to putting into my pfsense machine, which hopefully will increase its chances of compatibility etc.

Looking to stick with the Intel NIC as every time I have deviated to any other brand of NIC I have come across issues, or it simply will not work.

I have a Zyxel XS1930 L3 managed switch, which is multigig up to 10G, Fingers crossed it will negotiate at 2.5g without any messing around.

P.S does the X550 get stupidly hot like the X540 did?

I will update this thread to let people know how I got on.

[w0w]

@panzerscope said in Modify Intel X540-T2 NIC To Work At 2.5GbE ?:

P.S does the X550 get stupidly hot like the X540 did?

Maybe a bit less, but all these network cards are designed for use in servers, where airflow and cooling are not an issue — of course, this comes at the cost of additional noise.

BTW i226-v is also Intel card ; )
You can buy one as plan B in case of plan A fails. Amazon

[JKnott]

@panzerscope 10 Gb was created before 2.5 and 5 Gb Ethernet speeds. Those 2 were created later because 10 Gb was too much of an increase at the time. Any chance you can replace the NIC or add another?

[panzerscope]

Update.

X550-T2 installed and latest firmware installed that I could which was 3.6 as it is a Lenovo SKU. All seems to be working well, but there is odd behaviour. Unless I force pfsense to run my WAN interface to 2.5G, it will default to 1G. I note that when I set it to 2.5g, this setting does not persist upon reboots and will default back to 1G.

Oddly enough my internet while I can achieve 2GB Down (this is correct), for some reason on the upload it only achieves 1GB. My subscription is 1:1 so I should have 2GB on the upload also.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Thanks,
P

[stephenw10]

How/where are you setting that link speed?

[panzerscope]

@stephenw10

Interface>WAN>Speed & Duplex.

I am now sure if this made the difference, but after disabling Gateway Monitoring for WAN interface, the Speed & Duplex setting now persists after reboots.

[stephenw10]

Hmm, hard to see how that would make any difference. But you could try just disabling the monitoring action and not the monitoring itself so you still get quality data.

[w0w]

@panzerscope
Try set advertise speed setting
dev.ix.0.advertise_speed=55
NBASE-T Support for Intel X550
You can use system tunables in the GUI now.
Also some explanation why it is not autonegotiating 2.5G https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/Intel-X550-T2-Nothing-above-1Gb-Part-2/m-p/1457923#M32289

@Irwan_Intel said in Intel X550-T2 - Nothing above 1Gb - Part 2:

In certain scenarios, where default behavior was to advertise 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps, you saw failures to establish the link. But you wont see the failure if both of these speeds are excluded from auto-negotiation.

It was decided to DISABLE these two speeds from auto-negotiation when the driver initializes but still give an end user means to enable them manually.

In fact, i think it's a great success that you managed to connect. Because NBASE-T is a pretty capricious thing and some switches can't activate it if, for example, flow control is disabled.

[panzerscope]

@w0w said in Modify Intel X540-T2 NIC To Work At 2.5GbE ?:

@panzerscope
Try set advertise speed setting
dev.ix.0.advertise_speed=55
NBASE-T Support for Intel X550
You can use system tunables in the GUI now.
Also some explanation why it is not autonegotiating 2.5G https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/Intel-X550-T2-Nothing-above-1Gb-Part-2/m-p/1457923#M32289

@Irwan_Intel said in Intel X550-T2 - Nothing above 1Gb - Part 2:

In certain scenarios, where default behavior was to advertise 2.5 Gbps and 5 Gbps, you saw failures to establish the link. But you wont see the failure if both of these speeds are excluded from auto-negotiation.

It was decided to DISABLE these two speeds from auto-negotiation when the driver initializes but still give an end user means to enable them manually.

In fact, i think it's a great success that you managed to connect. Because NBASE-T is a pretty capricious thing and some switches can't activate it if, for example, flow control is disabled.

Thanks. I have entered in that tuneable and I can now have WAN on Autoselect and it will now negotiate to 2.5G as one would hope, so that is great, thank you.

Oddly however for some reason, my upload is still gimped and I cannot tell just yet if that is the behaviour of the ISP side or Pfsense and the recent change to the X550-T2 NIC and what all that has entailed. I am going to confirm with the ISP that putting their router into Bridge Mode does not effectively half the upload I should be getting (2GB upload plan, though only getting approximately 1GB)

I may have to test after taking their router out of bridge mode to confirm, as even though I have sent in a ticket, I want to validate what they are saying.

EDIT

Looks like there are instances where others are having the same issues, this was a first example.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/1j95ft2/25_gbit_connection_upload_speed_not_even_close_to/

My setup shouldn't be the issue. My networks hierarchy is the following.

ISP Router - In Bridge Mode (2.5G Port)] > Pfsense (X550-T2 - Configured to run at 2.5G) > Zyxel XS1930 L3 Switch (Operating at 10G) > Main PC (Confirmed connected at 10G to the Switch)

[stephenw10]

Are you actually seeing anything over 941Mbps? If not that implies something may still be linked at 1G. Though I don't believe it's possible to link at different rates for up/down so it would have to be at some other part of the connection.

[w0w]

@panzerscope said in Modify Intel X540-T2 NIC To Work At 2.5GbE ?:

ISP Router

Is it Fritz!box? And pfSense is running on bare metal, not in VM?

[panzerscope]

@stephenw10 said in Modify Intel X540-T2 NIC To Work At 2.5GbE ?:

Are you actually seeing anything over 941Mbps? If not that implies something may still be linked at 1G. Though I don't believe it's possible to link at different rates for up/down so it would have to be at some other part of the connection.

Yes I have seen it spike over 1GB. So I do not think there is a link anywhere in my chain at 1GB limiting me. Though I am going to run my Main PC direct to my Pfsense LAN port to see if I experience anything different, though I am not expecting to.

@w0w said in Modify Intel X540-T2 NIC To Work At 2.5GbE ?:

@panzerscope said in Modify Intel X540-T2 NIC To Work At 2.5GbE ?:

ISP Router

Is it Fritz!box? And pfSense is running on bare metal, not in VM?

The ISP Router is an Adtran SDG-8622-20B0 . Pfsense is running bare metal. I would imagine it makes no difference but the ISP router connects to a saparate ONT box, supplied by the ISP. The ONT box is technically the first device in the network but I was informed that the ONT box is capable of 10G.

[w0w]

@panzerscope said in Modify Intel X540-T2 NIC To Work At 2.5GbE ?:

Adtran SDG-8622-20B0

The more I read about similar issues, the more I’m inclined to think that it’s primarily a compatibility problem between the network card’s PHY and the upstream router. Especially if there’s confirmation that everything works as expected when connected directly to upstream router.
And is the presence of the Adtran SDG-8622-20B0 really necessary? If there’s an ONT box with 10G Ethernet, can’t it be connected directly to pfSense?