NBASE-T Support for Intel X550

stephenw10

It's only in 13-stable right now so at the very least it would need either to brought into 12 stable or pfSense moved to 13 stable (or newer).

Brian Cunnie

@daplumber I don't have any idea when it would show up in a pfsense release.

Also, I've been struggling to get this to work on my non-pfsense straight-FreeBSD 13 firewall, and in spite of several attempts the Intel X550 negotiates a 1Gbe not 2.5Gbe connection. When I get it working I'll update the thread.

daplumber

@brian-cunnie I have found that the connection needs to be pretty clean. I use a Cat8 factory made cable. The chipset also runs pretty warm, I had to ensure good thermal grease and adequate air flow.

stephenw10

Interesting. One of the big advantages of 2.5G is that it runs over cat5e. I've never had an issue using igc. Not tried an x550 though.

Steve

daplumber

@stephenw10 I know that’s the spec. I just had zero auto negotiation issues when I switched to a Cat8 cable, I went from Cat5 straight to Cat8 as they were weirdly cheaper at the time, so I skipped Cat5e, Cat6, and Cat7. I just wanted it to work. The other end is an Arris S33 Cable modem which I think is some kind of Broadcom chipset? I don’t know if different chipsets/drivers are better at auto-negotiating?

Brian Cunnie

Solution: the reason I've been having trouble getting my FreeBSD-based firewall running on an Atom C3000 SoC to negotiate 2.5Gbe with my Arris S33 modem is that the custom Intel 10G X550 on the SoC does not do NBASE-T—either you get 1Gbe or 10Gbe and nothing in between. Sigh.

On the bright side, I learned a lot about building the FreeBSD kernel and a reasonable amount about the ixgbe driver source code and about reading Intel datasheets. I must admit it was kind of fun.

I'll revert to plugging the S33 & the firewall into a 1/2.5/5/10 switch, and that'll make it work. I was hoping for a direct connect, but that's not possible.

daplumber

@brian-cunnie Well that’s a bummer. I guess they simplified the network part on the SoC version. I didn’t even realize that existed!

stephenw10

Hmm, X553 claims to support 2.5G, but not autonegotiate at that:
https://www.intel.co.uk/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/manuals/atom-c3000-family-programmer-reference-manual.pdf#G2.1229696

I imagine the external components would also need to.

Steve

Brian Cunnie

@stephenw10 Good catch! I didn't realize that C3000 SoC X553 allows 2.5Gbe.

I hacked the ixgbe driver to allow 2.5Gbe for my card, ran sudo ifconfig ix0 media 2500Base-T to set it to 2.5Gbe, and then attached it to the Arris S33, but the carrier never came up, and I couldn't communicate with the Arris.

stephenw10

Hmm, could be a number of things. You think your code hack was good though?

Brian Cunnie

@stephenw10 I would say I'm 80% confident my hack was correct. Here's the code diff:

--- a/sys/dev/ixgbe/if_ix.c
+++ b/sys/dev/ixgbe/if_ix.c
@@ -1286,7 +1286,8 @@ ixgbe_add_media_types(if_ctx_t ctx)
        if (layer & IXGBE_PHYSICAL_LAYER_10BASE_T)
                ifmedia_add(sc->media, IFM_ETHER | IFM_10_T, 0, NULL);

-       if (hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550) {
+       if (hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550 ||
+               hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550EM_a) {
                ifmedia_add(sc->media, IFM_ETHER | IFM_2500_T, 0, NULL);
                ifmedia_add(sc->media, IFM_ETHER | IFM_5000_T, 0, NULL);
        }
@@ -1438,8 +1439,6 @@ ixgbe_config_link(if_ctx_t ctx)
                         * autonegotiation preferences and the default
                         * set of speeds should exclude 2.5G and 5G.
                         */
-                       autoneg &= ~(IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_2_5GB_FULL |
-                           IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_5GB_FULL);
                }

                if (hw->mac.ops.setup_link)
@@ -2265,7 +2264,8 @@ ixgbe_if_media_status(if_ctx_t ctx, struct ifmediareq * ifmr)
                        ifmr->ifm_active |= IFM_10_T | IFM_FDX;
                        break;
                }
-       if (hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550)
+       if (hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550 ||
+               hw->mac.type == ixgbe_mac_X550EM_a)
                switch (sc->link_speed) {
                case IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_5GB_FULL:
                        ifmr->ifm_active |= IFM_5000_T | IFM_FDX;
@@ -4283,8 +4283,6 @@ ixgbe_get_default_advertise(struct ixgbe_softc *sc)
                 * are disabled by default due to reported
                 * interoperability issues with some switches.
                 */
-               link_caps &= ~(IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_2_5GB_FULL |
-                   IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_5GB_FULL);
        }

        speed =
--- a/sys/dev/ixgbe/ixgbe_x550.c
+++ b/sys/dev/ixgbe/ixgbe_x550.c
@@ -1945,6 +1945,8 @@ s32 ixgbe_get_link_capabilities_X550em(struct ixgbe_hw *hw,
                        /* fall through */
                default:
                        *speed = IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_10GB_FULL |
+                                IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_2_5GB_FULL |
+                                IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_5GB_FULL |
                                 IXGBE_LINK_SPEED_1GB_FULL;
                        break;
                }

stephenw10

Mmm, well that doesn't look wrong.
But I couldn't tell you if that's all that's required there.

nater

@Brian-Cunnie I have an HPE Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 562T Adapter which is an Intel X550-T2 under the hood, and it was working at 2500Base-T in pre-2.7.0 pfSense releases (such as 2.6.0) as long as I left Speed and Duplex at "Default", because if I changed it to autoselect, I could not get link when connecting to a 2500Base-T device (such as a switch or cable modem). The caveat was that the speed would always show as "unknown" in pfSense, but when set to "Default" it would negotiate to 2500Base-T and I'd get 2.5Gbps performance despite the "unknown" speed.

pfSense 2.7.0 is not like that however. "Default" or "autoselect" now cause the link to negotiate to 1000Base-T but then the link drops, and re-negotiates to 1000Base-T, drops, over and over again every few seconds for the cable modem. I do see this warning in the pfSense UI: "MUST be set to autoselect (automatically negotiate speed) unless the port this interface connects to has its speed and duplex forced." I haven't tried forcing the cable modem as well as the ethernet card in pfSense to 2500Base-T at the same time, but I'm not sure it's worth it to me, I don't have a lot of 2500Base-T devices to fail over to if things go south with my pfSense config and this HPE Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 562T Adapter. So I've simply set the WAN interface to 1000Base-T for now, and plugged my LAN connection into a gigabit switch port.

Is there a dual 2.5Gbps PCIe ethernet card that will reliably auto-negotiate at 2500Base-T in pfSense 2.7.0?

w0w

@nater
I have similar Dell card. On the latest Dell firmware and pfSense plus 23.05.1, which is very close to 2.7 I have had similar problems.
In my case I have dumb 2.5Gbit switch on one port and that caused the same issue with negotiation.
I have set the speed manually on the card/pfSense side to 2.5 and now it's working just fine.

Brian Cunnie

Is there a dual 2.5Gbps PCIe ethernet card that will reliably auto-negotiate at 2500Base-T in pfSense 2.7.0?

I don't know.

You're lucky: you must have the flavor of the X550-T2 card that includes the X550-BT2 chipset, which supports NBASE-T. The other flavor includes the X550-AT2 chipset, no NBASE-T.

w0w

@Brian-Cunnie
From link you provided for x550-t2
333369-009 43
Intel Ethernet Controller X550 Datasheet
Introduction
1.5 Overview: New Capabilities Beyond the X540
1.5.1 NBASE-T Support
Support for 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T is added to the X550

Also, there is revision description that states that support for NBASE-T was added in revision 2.0, so any card that bough from 2016 rev 2.0 supports NBASE.

Am I reading something wrong?

Brian Cunnie

@w0w said:

Am I reading something wrong?

No, you're not reading anything wrong. In fact, it's in line with what I said: there are two flavors of the X550-T2 controller: one that does NBASE-T, and another that doesn't.

It can be confusing: there's the X550-T2 controller (card), and there are the chipsets, X550-AT2 and X550-BT2. One or the other of the chipsets can be incorporated in the card. The X550-AT2 chipset doesn't do NBASE-T, and the X550-BT2 does.

w0w

@Brian-Cunnie
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/84329/intel-ethernet-controller-x550at2/specifications.html

Data Rate Per Port
10/5/2.5/1GbE (NBASE-T in Linux Only)

No, I think, AT2 and BT2 is just different “form-factor” for the same chipset
Compare
source
As you can see, all those iterations support NBASE-T in linux only (FREEBSD too, not by intel anyway)

Brian Cunnie

@w0w said:

No, I think, AT2 and BT2 is just different “form-factor” for the same chipset
Compare
source
As you can see, all those iterations support NBASE-T in linux only (FREEBSD too, not by intel anyway)

You're absolutely right, and I was completely wrong.

I had confused the X557-AT2 (no NBASE-T) chipset with the X550-AT2 chipset.

Thanks for the correction!

nater

@w0w Setting the speed manually to 2500Base-T with pfSense 2.7.0 and my HPE Ethernet 10Gb 2-port 562T Adapter definitely does not work for establishing a stable link to my Motorola cable modem. 1000Base-T is totally stable. I assume this is a FreeBSD bug, so I should be filing a FreeBSD bug report? Anyone know the best way to do that?

I did spend a little time looking into alternatives, and they all seem worse. Realtek can't be trusted for 24/7 heavy network duties, and while I thought maybe a different Intel 2.5Gbps solution might work like this:

https://www.startech.com/en-us/networking-io/pr42gi-network-card

Word is that the I225-V (and probably the I226) are dumpster fires:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/wi4soc/the_new_intel_i226v_i226lm_i226it_nics/

So then I thought maybe something Marvell AQtion AQC113C based could be good:

https://www.qnap.com/en/product/qxg-10g2tb/specs/hardware

Not for FreeBSD right now:

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/support-for-marvell-r-aqc113cs-b1-c-10gbps-lan.89179/