Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release

[Cybermaze]

I want to thank the original poster TheNarc, this thread and the compiled drivers provided were very helpful. The compiled driver is much better than the default drivers, it really made me realize how terrible the default drivers are.

In the end I chose to switch to another PC/server with Intel NICs, even if this is just for a home network.

Thanks again!

[wkn]

@netblues

Realtek is not very "open" in their information policies. So don't expect anything. Also the update frequency is very slow for network drivers.

[knight-of-ni]

Just downloaded, built, and installed the 196.04 if_re.ko driver on one of my pfsense boxes. It's too soon to declare success, but so far so good.

For those that don't already know a good set of instructions can be found here:
https://gist.github.com/jovimon/524e116471f249626fd2ccd141f3fe05

[netblues]

Anyone care to also upload the compiled driver please?

[knight-of-ni]

Here is the 196.04 driver I built:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mjye6acwfwgwv7s/if_re.ko?dl=0

[netblues]

huge size increase, from 509128 to 852256....
april driver

Server listening on 5201

Accepted connection from 192.168.31.51, port 50796
[ 5] local 192.168.31.1 port 5201 connected to 192.168.31.51 port 50797
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 31.3 MBytes 262 Mbits/sec 65 72.7 KBytes
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 42.5 MBytes 356 Mbits/sec 65 62.7 KBytes
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 42.8 MBytes 359 Mbits/sec 53 41.3 KBytes
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 42.3 MBytes 355 Mbits/sec 51 51.3 KBytes
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 44.3 MBytes 372 Mbits/sec 42 68.4 KBytes
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 43.9 MBytes 368 Mbits/sec 67 49.9 KBytes
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 40.0 MBytes 336 Mbits/sec 32 72.7 KBytes
[ 5] 7.00-8.01 sec 39.5 MBytes 327 Mbits/sec 42 67.0 KBytes
[ 5] 8.01-9.00 sec 39.0 MBytes 332 Mbits/sec 60 54.2 KBytes
[ 5] 9.00-9.99 sec 39.5 MBytes 334 Mbits/sec 52 40.5 KBytes

---

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-9.99 sec 405 MBytes 340 Mbits/sec 529 sender

Server listening on 5201

Accepted connection from 192.168.31.51, port 50807
[ 5] local 192.168.31.1 port 5201 connected to 192.168.31.51 port 50808
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 27.8 MBytes 233 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 1.00-2.01 sec 35.0 MBytes 292 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 2.01-3.00 sec 31.4 MBytes 265 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 34.8 MBytes 292 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 35.3 MBytes 296 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 36.2 MBytes 304 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 34.7 MBytes 291 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 34.6 MBytes 290 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 8.00-9.03 sec 36.9 MBytes 301 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 9.03-10.00 sec 35.4 MBytes 307 Mbits/sec

---

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 342 MBytes 287 Mbits/sec receiver

Server listening on 5201

new driver

---

Server listening on 5201

Accepted connection from 192.168.31.51, port 51061
[ 5] local 192.168.31.1 port 5201 connected to 192.168.31.51 port 51062
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr Cwnd
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 35.4 MBytes 297 Mbits/sec 51 59.9 KBytes
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 44.6 MBytes 374 Mbits/sec 43 78.4 KBytes
[ 5] 2.00-3.01 sec 34.8 MBytes 290 Mbits/sec 78 60.2 KBytes
[ 5] 3.01-4.00 sec 45.6 MBytes 387 Mbits/sec 71 59.9 KBytes
[ 5] 4.00-5.00 sec 45.0 MBytes 377 Mbits/sec 46 75.6 KBytes
[ 5] 5.00-6.00 sec 45.1 MBytes 378 Mbits/sec 41 69.9 KBytes
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 44.4 MBytes 374 Mbits/sec 52 72.7 KBytes
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 41.7 MBytes 349 Mbits/sec 32 48.5 KBytes
[ 5] 8.00-9.00 sec 44.9 MBytes 377 Mbits/sec 56 2.85 KBytes
[ 5] 9.00-10.00 sec 42.8 MBytes 359 Mbits/sec 47 49.9 KBytes

---

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate Retr
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 424 MBytes 356 Mbits/sec 517 sender

Server listening on 5201

Accepted connection from 192.168.31.51, port 51064
[ 5] local 192.168.31.1 port 5201 connected to 192.168.31.51 port 51065
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 5] 0.00-1.00 sec 28.5 MBytes 239 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 1.00-2.00 sec 36.2 MBytes 303 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 2.00-3.00 sec 35.6 MBytes 299 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 3.00-4.00 sec 35.7 MBytes 299 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 4.00-5.03 sec 36.1 MBytes 296 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 5.03-6.00 sec 36.9 MBytes 318 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 6.00-7.00 sec 35.7 MBytes 299 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 7.00-8.00 sec 36.2 MBytes 304 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 8.00-9.03 sec 37.5 MBytes 307 Mbits/sec
[ 5] 9.03-10.00 sec 37.2 MBytes 320 Mbits/sec

---

[ ID] Interval Transfer Bitrate
[ 5] 0.00-10.01 sec 356 MBytes 298 Mbits/sec receiver

Server listening on 5201

No significant differences... retries still exist
testing on a direct lan connection

[TheNarc]

Thanks to everyone who has kept this thread alive, and for pointing out 1.96. I try to check the Realtek driver page periodically but hadn't since this version was released. @knight-of-ni thanks for posting a compiled driver. I plan to load it on my two machines as well, but just wanted to confirm that you build it for 2.4.5-RELEASE-p1 (FreeBSD 11.3-STABLE) and not a 2.5 pre-release before I do. Thanks again!

[knight-of-ni]

I built if_re.ko in a vm running FreeBSD 11.3-RELEASE. Works for me.

[TheNarc]

Just loaded the driver compiled by @knight-of-ni on one of my two pfSense machines and all looks good. @netblues regarding the size increase, I'm not certain, but I'm willing to bet that most if not all of it is attributable to the fact that Realtek seems to release a single driver to support all their chipsets. So this 1.96 version may not have any changes at all for their older chipsets, and merely add support for newer ones. As noted elsewhere, since they're not great at communicating change logs or release notes, it's hard to know.

[knight-of-ni]

The 196 driver adds support for Realtek's line of new 2.5Gbps chipsets. I'm sure that is part of the reason why the new driver is larger.

I've created a diff for anyone who wants to look through the changes in the source code:
https://github.com/knight-of-ni/rtl_bsd_drv/commit/8d5ec5a609e5ce906ffc349f7a5d8432d2f03e4b

[Napsterbater]

@knight-of-ni
Working perfect on 2.4.5-RELEASE-p on my ZOTAC ZBOX CI325

Note if you are showing Errors Out just double check under System -> Advanced -> Networking that all 3 Hardware offloading options are disabled.

I was showing some on my VLAN interfaces, and apparently mine were not disabled for some reason, seems to have fixed that. YMMV

[KNG75]

My Zotac CI323 has had 5 or 6 mystery LAN issues in the last week but only 3 or 4 previously over a year's period. I previous had ESXi 6 installed on it which is a major pain due to there being no video at a certain point but that's a story for another time. When running pfsense as a vm under ESXi, I never had issues.

I was running headless and once the problem started happening, I just got a blank screen when plugging up a monitor so I thought the box was hung up and would power cycle it. I left the monitor plugged in and today, when it stopped responding, I found the re1 watchdog timeouts but the system was still online. Rebooted and the problem resolved.

I've installed @knight-of-ni 's driver and hopefully, that resolves the problem.

I should note that previously when this rarely happened, I was on a slower internet service. I've since upgraded and that's when the problem started to happen much more often.

[knight-of-ni]

@KNG75 Yeah, my story is similar. Over the years I deployed a CI323, a CI325, CI327, and CI329 at different locations. They all ran pretty well. The CI325 has a reboot issue on FreeBSD but that is a different story.

Then after upgrading them to pfSense 2.4.4, the LAN nic on all these boxes would each take turns going offline. Each machine would break about once a month. The log on each was filled with watchdog timeouts. Fortunately I could vpn in from the WAN side and just reboot each machine.

I found this thread while researching the problem, promptly switched them all over to the Realtek driver, and all three machines are back to running reliably.

It kind of sucks we've got to build a new nic driver after every new release of pfSense, but I have not found a substitute with Intel nics, quad core cpu, min 4GB ram, similar form factor, and a similar price.

I never would have thought to put ESXi on one of these boxes, and I can imagine what a trick that was!

[gregeeh]

@knight-of-ni said in Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release:

but I have not found a substitute with Intel nics, quad core cpu, min 4GB ram,

These are really good,[NUC-C3L2 Fanless Mini PC - link removed] but only dual core.

Admin edit: Please don't post direct links to our competitors who do nothing to support the project.

[Griffo]

@knight-of-ni Thanks for compiling and uploading the driver once again.

I can confirm that on my setup the iPerf results from stock driver to your driver went from ~300Mbit per second to around 370Mbits. This is inter-vlan on a hair-pinned 1GB interface.
And as a bonus the Firewall doesn't stop responding after the test :-)

[KNG75]

I'm on the official realtek driver and I got almost 20 days without a watchdog timeout. Unfortunately, I lost connectivity today and had the timeout. Had to reboot to resolve.

[m4nf47]

Huge thanks to knight-of-ni for providing the latest compiled 1.96 driver and to everyone else in this thread, my rather nervous attempt at finally fixing this dreaded re watchdog timeout error seems to have worked for me using the current 2.4.5-RELEASE-p1. I have also forked and slightly updated the driver compilation instructions just in case anyone else needs to repeat this from scratch here -> https://gist.github.com/kmarf/960f3a00690756f978882607dec94179

In case of above links not working I've mirrored the compiled driver here -> https://drive.google.com/file/d/15lsDnnCz0C9rD9qIsmT0JeniFsSxgxTR/view?usp=sharing

and the original driver source file here -> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rMRo3fM9U-bSHLtpuGsbDY8oao00DSac/view?usp=sharing

Thanks again, fingers crossed this helps :)

[kmot]

@knight-of-ni is there any change You could build if_re.ko for FreeBSD 12.1 as well? :)

[Rico]

Here you go: rtl_bsd12.1_drv_v196.04.zip

-Rico

[kmot]

@Rico said in Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release:

Here you go: rtl_bsd12.1_drv_v196.04.zip

-Rico

Thank you very much, Rico! :)