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    Introducing Netgate Nexus: Multi-Instance Management at Your Fingertips.

    RTL8126 NIC Speed reduction on 2.8.1 compared to Intel NIC.

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    • S Offline
      swansense
      last edited by

      Hey All,

      I searched the forum for "realtek 5Gbps" and "RTL8126" but only found one thread from 2 years ago that did not provide any help.

      I am running Pfsense 2.8.1 as a VM in proxmox with the WAN NIC being a pass-through Realtek 5Gbps RTL8126 NIC and the LAN NIC being the proxmox bridge in Virtio.

      I installed the realtek-re-kmod-1100.00.1500029_1 and it is detected and the NIC is usable but it seems to be limiting my wan connection to around 1.5Gbps in comparison to 2.3Gbps in what i was seeing with an intel 2.5Gbps i226 NIC.

      Is there a Driver that is recommended for this NIC? I tired "realtek-re-kmod198-198.00.1500029.pkg" from this thread but the NIC did not even appear as a usable interface in pfSense 2.8.1.

      What could be causing the speed reduction? is it the driver?

      I have a 5Gbps WAN connection so want to maximize my connection. My proxmox server is an old DELL T20 and i know i will be limited to around 3.5Gbps as the PCI slot is 1x PCIe x1 Gen 2 but its the same slot the intel NIC was running in and giving me 2.3Gbps on the WAN.

      Additional info
      I have the following check in advanced >networking
      Disable hardware checksum offload
      Disable hardware TCP segmentation offload
      Disable hardware large receive offload
      Enable the ALTQ support for hn NICs.

      The WAN NIC is showing media: Ethernet autoselect (5000Base-T <full-duplex>)

      Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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      • stephenw10S Offline
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        That should be the rge(4) driver. That's new in 26.03.

        S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • S Offline
          swansense @stephenw10
          last edited by swansense

          @stephenw10 said in RTL8126 NIC Speed reduction on 2.8.1 compared to Intel NIC.:

          That should be the rge(4) driver. That's new in 26.03.

          Stupid question but how would I even install that? I don't see it in the repos if is search "pkg search rge"

          UPDATE

          Disregard just realised I needed pfsense+

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          • stephenw10S Offline
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Yup, sorry, 26.03 is Plus. It should be in 2.9 when that goes public too.

            S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • S Offline
              swansense @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10 said in RTL8126 NIC Speed reduction on 2.8.1 compared to Intel NIC.:

              Yup, sorry, 26.03 is Plus. It should be in 2.9 when that goes public too.

              Any idea when it will be made public?

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              • stephenw10S Offline
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                No set timeline for that yet.

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