HP T620 Plus Thin Client with Intel Pro/1000 PT Quad Issue
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Hi everyone,
I got a HP T620 Plus Thin Client from office for free last week and was trying to turn it into my homelab router at home. I also bought a Intel PRO/1000 PT to be installed into the Thin Client. Now, installation and assigning WAN to the onboard Realtek nic went smoothly, but once I tried connecting any devices to any of the port on the Intel card, it never gets link-up. It shows all Intel ports as valid interfaces when I chose assign interfaces, but they are all "down" even when I plugged a device into any one of the ports.
Has someone had similar issues with their Thin clients before and how to resolve this?
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Assign manually your ports.
The first LAN port of your Quad adapter, is em0 or em3
Try first em0 for your LAN and skip opt1 and opt2.
Then connect your LAN cable to the 1st LAN port, if you don't get connection,
plug the cable in the 4st LAN port.
If you then get a IP, and can login to the web UI, your good.
If you then want the LAN port be on the otherside , you must choose em3 for your LAN.
On some types of the Intel Pro/1000 the closest LAN port to the PCI-Express connector is em0, and sometimes it's em3.Grtz
DeLorean -
Thanks! Let me give it a shot after I get home.
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/offtopic Ah, at last some one tried that. I had a bunch of t610 plus at some time, but never had time to experiment with pfSense on them.
Maybe you have problems with link negotiation, or just with shitgrade cables - try forcing link speed/duplex manually.
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Assign manually your ports.
The first LAN port of your Quad adapter, is em0 or em3
Try first em0 for your LAN and skip opt1 and opt2.
Then connect your LAN cable to the 1st LAN port, if you don't get connection,
plug the cable in the 4st LAN port.
If you then get a IP, and can login to the web UI, your good.
If you then want the LAN port be on the otherside , you must choose em3 for your LAN.
On some types of the Intel Pro/1000 the closest LAN port to the PCI-Express connector is em0, and sometimes it's em3.Grtz
DeLoreanSorry for the late update. It works!! Thank you very much! You are absolutely correct. Turned out em0 is the furthest away from PCI-E connector rather than closest and now I can assign all interfaces to the appropriate devices in the lab.
/offtopic Ah, at last some one tried that. I had a bunch of t610 plus at some time, but never had time to experiment with pfSense on them.
Maybe you have problems with link negotiation, or just with shitgrade cables - try forcing link speed/duplex manually.
So it's been two days of running and it's just purr-ing along greatly! Apparently there is another T620 Plus being decommissioned in the office and I'm planning to grab before someone else does! Now I just need to play around with the firewall rules in each port to adjust each device accordingly. On a side note, I was surprised not many uses HP thin clients here. Is it because it's expensive and rather hard to get?
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On a side note, I was surprised not many uses HP thin clients here. Is it because it's expensive and rather hard to get?
Most likely. Those two are rarely a good combination to make a platform hugely successful anywhere and least of all to the users of this forum… ;)
Seriously, the plus with a nic-card looks like a great low powered compact basic firewalling pfSense platform for internet connections below 500 Mbit/sec. Especially at the price you get them. :)
I have some older HP thin clients and they're low powered and compact but that's it. :(
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On a side note, I was surprised not many uses HP thin clients here. Is it because it's expensive and rather hard to get?
I have used many Fujitsu Futro S550 with CF card (embedded version) and Fujitsu Futro S900 and S900N with mSata SSD (full pfSense version),
because these costs less then then HP T620 here in Belgium, and also these doesn't require a extra expansion bay like the T620 Plus, for adding a extra NIC card.
This extra bay rises the total costs.
With these Fujitsu Thin Clients a maximum throughput speed arround 550Mbps is possible.Grtz
DeLorean -
On a side note, I was surprised not many uses HP thin clients here. Is it because it's expensive and rather hard to get?
1st: costs, for the cost of the new HP TC you can get a pretty decent pfsense platform (albeit usually in a bulkier case)
2nd: not everyone even know that "thin client" means, even less understand what x86 TCs could be used for such unusual purpose. -
When version 2.5 arrives, all the cheap Thin Clients that now are used for pfSense become totally useless,
unless you keep version 2.3.4 using.
Even the nice XTM5 boxes will be useless then.
The Thin Clients that have a AES-NI supported cpu, are at least 2 or 3 times more expensive,
at not so attractive anymore for the use of pfSense.Grtz
DeLorean