Help with NIC NC360T and onboard NIC on P5B VM SE

[quangnd]

I did as follow
uncheck on Disable hardware checksum offload
uncheck on Disable hardware TCP segmentation offload
check on Disable hardware large receive offload
Is that OK?
I have no information about the onboard NIC :(
Help please.

[stephenw10]

HP NC360T is actaully an Intel em(4) gigabit NIC. It should come up as em0 and em1.
You should leave the NIC offloading options set as default.
If you have trouble with your NICs you should follow the guide here:
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tuning_and_Troubleshooting_Network_Cards#Intel_igb.284.29_and_em.284.29_Cards

The on board NIC apperas to be a Realtek 8169s. It should come up as re0.
http://blog.zer0.net/2007/05/11/freebsd-on-the-asus-p5b-vm-motherboard/

Edit: My mistake the 'SE' version appears to have an Attansic L1 NIC which should be supported by the age(4) driver.

Steve

[quangnd]

Thanks for your reply,
Yesterday, I download and install pfSense-2.0.1-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga.img to my USB Transend 16G JF300 on mainboard G31M-ES2L with NC360T plugged in PCIe x16 slot. The PC have no HDD. I will love to use this config if it is OK. The installation process seemed to be fine and boot, saving, loading config rather slow. My question is:

• How can I use whole space of my USB instead of 4G only?
• Why pfSenese recognize my NC360T only 100Mbps? It is difference if I install on HDD. Re-checked, 1G already  ;D
• If installed on USB, the performance (forget about boot or config manipulation) will be better or worse?

[quangnd]

@stephenw10:

HP NC360T is actaully an Intel em(4) gigabit NIC. It should come up as em0 and em1.
You should leave the NIC offloading options set as default.
If you have trouble with your NICs you should follow the guide here:
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tuning_and_Troubleshooting_Network_Cards#Intel_igb.284.29_and_em.284.29_Cards

The on board NIC apperas to be a Realtek 8169s. It should come up as re0.
http://blog.zer0.net/2007/05/11/freebsd-on-the-asus-p5b-vm-motherboard/

Edit: My mistake the 'SE' version appears to have an Attansic L1 NIC which should be supported by the age(4) driver.

Steve

Dear Steve,
I read this specs of NC360T at http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/networking/nc360t/index.html.
They said that the NIC has "TCP checksum & segmentation offloading": so I uncheck " Disable hardware checksum offload and Disable hardware TCP segmentation offload. I think I did right!

[stephenw10]

@quangnd:

• How can I use whole space of my USB instead of 4G only?

It is possible to resize the Nano images but there is very little point. You will never get close to using 4GB.

@quangnd:

• If installed on USB, the performance (forget about boot or config manipulation) will be better or worse?

After it has booted it runs entirely from RAM, the performance is no different but bootup may be slower.

The em(4) supports the hardware offloading features of the Intel NICs. It may increase the transfer speed very slightly but not noticeably. Since Intel NICs are the best supported under FreeBSD they are the least likely to give trouble with these options. Try it and see.

Steve

[quangnd]

Thank you very much.