Need Help Identifying Possible Hardware Issue
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I'm currently running the 2.0 Beta on a Jetway mini-ITX motherboard. The motherboard has an on-board 10/100 NIC, and I've added 3 gigabit NIC's by using the Jetway AD3RTLANG daughter board. The on-board NIC was originally used to connect to my cable modem, while the 3 gigabit NICs were connected to my network segments. After 4-5 months of this setup, I started having trouble with the system - DHCP on my main LAN segment wasn't work, the system would randomly hang after a reboot, and I was seeing messages about the interfaces going up/down. I finally got it to work by switching one of my LAN segments to the on-board NIC and using what was the main LAN NIC (part of the daughter board) to connect to the cable modem.
That switch fixed the booting/DHCP problem, although I still see some up/down messages. But I recently started using a SSH tunnel between a system on my LAN and a remote system to do remote backups. However, the tunnel randomly drops, some times after only 30-40 MB of data transfer. The errors that I get from SSH say that it received a disconnect from the remote server or that it received a corrupt packet. I've changing a few settings, such as switching to the "conservative" firewall setting and checking the fragmenting option. Neither of these have helped.
My gut feeling is that I should replace the daughter board. However, I'd rather not replace it blindly without knowing that it is the cause of this issue. I'd really appreciate any suggestions on how to confirm that it is indeed the cause of the problem.
In addition, if you have any experience with these daughter boards, should I get a replacement AD3RTLANG (Realtek NICs) daughter board, or should I go with the AD3INLAN-G (Intel NICs).
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I'm using 1.2.3 with a Jetway with the Intel daughterboard and it runs great. I have 3 of them in service all great. They've been running for about 6 months or so without issue.
There's no reason to purposely buy Realtec Nics. Buy the Intel daughter board.
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The Realtek boards on those are a serious crap shoot, I have one that won't work reliably with anything I've thrown on it, and all I've heard from others who have them is they either don't work at all or don't work right, varying somewhere between there depending on the OS you're running.
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My gut feeling is that I should replace the daughter board. However, I'd rather not replace it blindly without knowing that it is the cause of this issue. I'd really appreciate any suggestions on how to confirm that it is indeed the cause of the problem.
In addition, if you have any experience with these daughter boards, should I get a replacement AD3RTLANG (Realtek NICs) daughter board, or should I go with the AD3INLAN-G (Intel NICs).
I've had a Realtek 811C NIC encounter the same problem on another board before (D945GCLF-2). The connection kept flapping. It's a hardware issue and I replaced the NIC with an Intel MT Dual Port Server adapter (PCI-X) and there have been no problems ever since.
TBH, I wouldn't take the Realteks for anything that needs reliability. They have enough software side issues as it is and (lack of) hardware reliability simply compounds the fact.
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I have a Jetway JNC91 with the Intel Duaghteboard and it too works fine. But I've only run it for 5 days in production though.
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Thanks guys, I have the Intel version on order. I can't believe that the Realtek version of the board is the more popular of the two and in many instances the only daughter board sold by some retailers.
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I replaced the Realtek board with the Intel board and things are running well so far. Strangely, my RAM stopped working after I buttoned the box back up. So my troubles may have been RAM-related, but, regardless, I'm glad that I switched to the Intel board.
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Thanks guys, I have the Intel version on order. I can't believe that the Realtek version of the board is the more popular of the two and in many instances the only daughter board sold by some retailers.
It is cheaper and most users don't know the difference in reliability or driver support. Hence, they only see it as being cheaper and therefore, it is vastly more popular.