Any advice on Realtek nics - RTL8111E

newbieuser1234 · Sep 10, 2013, 12:42 PM

I have always used intel nics, but does anyone have any experience with the RTL8111E nics or similar. The boxes I buy with intel nics are about 100 more. Is it worth it?

jimp · Sep 11, 2013, 6:56 PM

Intel is always preferably to Realtek, especially for that little of a difference in the long run.

If you have a very light traffic load and will not stress it much, the Realtek NICs may be OK, but if you have a choice of getting Intel cards, go Intel.

newbieuser1234 · Sep 11, 2013, 9:48 PM

Thanks. Do you know or suggest a best bang for the buck system on a 20mb connection and able to run the snort package? 5 openvpn users doing file sharing ? I was thinking alix2d3 but it
May not work with the snort package on the cf card. Any thoughts?

xtra-james1 · Sep 13, 2013, 12:41 PM

As for now RTL8111E won't work with 2.1-RC2 and may not work with 2.1-RELEASE too.

stephenw10 · Sep 13, 2013, 1:58 PM

Hmm, are you sure?
The 'E' variant usually works with 2.1 though there are several hardware revisions all labeled 8111e.
The F and G variants are unsupported I believe.

Steve

doktornotor · Sep 13, 2013, 2:16 PM

@stephenw10:

Hmm, are you sure?
The 'E' variant usually works with 2.1 though there are several hardware revisions all labeled 8111e.
The F and G variants are unsupported I believe.

Steve

Supported by FreeBSD since February 2011.

stephenw10 · Sep 14, 2013, 12:37 AM

You mean the 8111E?

Steve

xtra-james1 · Sep 14, 2013, 7:51 AM

Yeah, my fault I meant RTL8111G isn't working.

RTL8111E works awesome with 2.1 as I have this setup currently myself in a Shuttle DS61 (with squid, havp and snort).

tguldener · Sep 14, 2013, 9:06 PM

I have the same Problem. the RTL8111G isn't working in any FreeBSD Kernel - including FreeBSD 10-ALPHA :'( I hope it will coming soon a solution for the Realtek RTL8111G NICs.

@kushtrim:

Yeah, my fault I meant RTL8111G isn't working.

kejianshi · Sep 19, 2013, 12:08 PM

I once made the mistake of buying a ATOM board with dual onboard realtek NICS without checking for support. ONCE - Never again.

I ended up not using the onboard NICS and just plugging a Intel card into it. Its supported now as of a couple days ago, but I'll probably stay on the add-on intel card since its been super reliable.

stephenw10 · Sep 19, 2013, 1:35 PM

For anyone not following the 'G' thread a much newer driver is now available to test here: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,65355.msg365028.html#msg365028

Steve