NIC drops speed to 10Mb

fredmatrack

Hello,

On our Dell server, the PCI nics all suddenly drop there speed to 10 Mb. We have the same server running in our other building without any problems.

When I run ifconfig -m on the server, this is the result:

bce3: flags=8943 <up,broadcast,running,promisc,simplex,multicast>metric 0 mtu 1500
	options=1bb <rxcsum,txcsum,vlan_mtu,vlan_hwtagging,jumbo_mtu,vlan_hwcsum,tso4>capabilities=1bb <rxcsum,txcsum,vlan_mtu,vlan_hwtagging,jumbo_mtu,vlan_hwcsum,tso4>ether 00:10:18:5d:ef:fe
	inet 192.168.1.254 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
	inet6 fe80::210:18ff:fe5d:effe%bce3 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4 
	media: Ethernet autoselect (10baseT/UTP <full-duplex>)
	status: active
	supported media:
		media autoselect
		media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex
		media 1000baseTX
		media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex
		media 100baseTX
		media 10baseT/UTP mediaopt full-duplex
		media 10baseT/UTP
		media none</full-duplex></rxcsum,txcsum,vlan_mtu,vlan_hwtagging,jumbo_mtu,vlan_hwcsum,tso4></rxcsum,txcsum,vlan_mtu,vlan_hwtagging,jumbo_mtu,vlan_hwcsum,tso4></up,broadcast,running,promisc,simplex,multicast>

There is a gigabit DLink switch connected. When I manually change the <media>and <mediaopt>tot 1000 it says 'no carrier'.

Any ideas?</mediaopt></media>

stephenw10

Bad cable? Check that first.

Steve

fredmatrack

All cables are fine, I've checked that twice.

eirikz

Have you tried also forcing the switchside to a given speed while you force the client side ?

Wouldn't be the first time I've seen (excuse my french) those crappy Dellswitches fail autonegotiation ::)

fredmatrack

The switches are D-Link. I tried to manually set the speed, but that doesn't work. Also, one of the switches isn't manageable. Any ideas?

eirikz

I really have no other ideas, except from the fact that it is dell switches….. burned so many times on those that I wouldn't want my worst enemy to run on them.

mpo101

I think you have a hardware problem and time has come to replace yours.

fredmatrack

We bought this machine in january 2010. That would be very quick.

I tried with a managed switch to set the speed to 100Mbit and this works. But what with the unmanaged switches?

cmb

@fredmatrack:

I tried with a managed switch to set the speed to 100Mbit and this works. But what with the unmanaged switches?

You have no choice but to rely on autonegotiation on the unmanaged switches (or force to half duplex only, you cannot force to full on an unmanaged switch). Given that's a newer NIC model, the newer driver in 2.0's FreeBSD 8.1 base may behave better, if it's a driver issue (possible, but hard to say).

fredmatrack

Is there a way to use the newer drivers in the pfSense 1.2.3 release?

jimp

I just helped someone out last week with a similar issue, on 1.2.3 the bce network cards would never get link above 10Mbit. Upgraded to 2.0 and it worked great at 1Gbit.