Problem with Broadcom P210TP Dual Port 10GBaseT NIC

arndtw

Hi,
we run a pfense 2.6 with two nics on board (intel igb) and and dual-port 1G nic as an addon card.
Now we wanted to upgrade the firewall with a dual port 10G card. Because of only one pci extension port we decided to exchange the 1G card with the 10G card.

We made a backup of the configuration. With a text editor we changed igb2 with bnxt0 and igb3 with bnxt1.

We took the firewall down and exchanged the nic-card.
Then we made a fresh install of pfsense 2.6. an restored the adapted backup file.

The new cards are found and available in the gui. The nic status is shown at the cli.

But there is no traffic going through those 10G cards. Because we had vlans on those ports an we know about the driver problem we took down the vlans from those ports. No change: No traffic through the broadcom interfaces.

We decided to update to 2.7. No difference: The cards are not working.

What have we done wrong? Can you help us?

Thx Wolfgang

stephenw10

What chipset are they? Are they SFP+? Do they show as linked?

Intel NICs are almost always a better choice. The Intel X500 based cards are pretty well known and supported at this point if you can use them.

Steve

arndtw

Hi,
we use this RJ45 cards.

https://www.broadcom.com/products/ethernet-connectivity/network-adapters/p210tp

The card is shown as linked.

Wolfgang

stephenw10

Do you see any errors logged when it attaches or when the link comes up? Do they show as linked at the correct rate?

arndtw

@stephenw10

I investigated a time this morning with a new build test system, and without importing the old backup.

On pfsense 2.6 i can get these card to work if i enable promisc mode with

ifconfig bnxt0 promisc

As soon as promisc is disabled there is no traffic.

I upgraded the test system to pfsense 2.7.
With that version there is no traffic possible. Not with promisc on an not with promisc disabled.

arndtw

@stephenw10

I rebooted the 2.7 system an there are errors on that nic.

stephenw10

Hmm, and I assume you do not see those errors in 2.6?

Not sure if there's a sysctl you can set for that. I'm not seeing anything that looks promising:
https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=bnxt&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+14.0-CURRENT&arch=default&format=html#SYSCTL_VARIABLES