Soekris 6501: hardware trouble?

covex

I encountered a strange issue with Soekris 6501-50 (em NICs) where it doesn't work well with 100/5 internet feed. 2 different Soekris boxes display similar issue. They work fine with 30/2 connection from the same provider but when I put them on 100/5 they work for 30-40 mins and then start dropping packets.
another box with sk NICs, P4 CPU and 1GB ram works fine on this 100/5 connection.

Is Soekris not powerful enough to handle 100/5?

dotdash

What happens when it starts dropping? CPU/Memory/states/mbufs, etc. I've got a couple holding up multiple connections including fiber. I think at least one is 100m, but they probably don't max it out much. What version of pfSense?

covex

it was happening on 2.1.3 and on 2.1.5, don't think I tried 2.2.x
cpu and memory looked normal but I didn't have time to investigate further because was forced to replace this box.
yesterday while investigating different issue with 2.2.2 I put another soekris 6501 with 2.1.3 in and it started dropping packets too as the original soekris box was doing.

it was happening on 2.1.3 and on 2.1.5, don't think I tried 2.2.x

It was on a net6501-50 you said, was you able to try out a net6501-70 also?

cpu and memory looked normal but I didn't have time to investigate further because was forced to replace this box.

And on the replacement box those port flapping where not there?

yesterday while investigating different issue with 2.2.2 I put another soekris 6501 with 2.1.3 in and it started dropping packets too as the original soekris box was doing.

I think it depends more on another failure or misconfiguration more then a hardware failure
or perhaps that the cpu is to lame perhaps, would this be?

PowerD is enabled on all boxes?
The mbuffer on the lan ports would be high enough?
Not to much rules where slaying it down?

covex

It was on a net6501-50 you said, was you able to try out a net6501-70 also?

i don't have 6501-70 boxes

And on the replacement box those port flapping where not there?

on a replacement soekris 6501-50 box the port flapping was still there. I put another box with sk nics, p4 cpu and 1 gb of memory with pfsense 2.1.3 and it works fine

PowerD is enabled on all boxes?

The mbuffer on the lan ports would be high enough?

didn't have time to check that

Not to much rules where slaying it down?

there are 3 ipsec tunnels and 6 fw rules on this box

dotdash

Checked mine- still on 2.1.x throughput maxes a little over 40 Mb/s. No packet loss.

didn't have time to check that

I really suggest looking for the PowerD, if not enabled the CPU will not be able to
use the option "TurboBoost" and also the CPU is not really able to saturate the entire
GHz peak and then also unleash not the entire power of this CPU, so you will never
be able to reach the maximum throughput and this perhaps causes the port flapping.

there are 3 ipsec tunnels and 6 fw rules on this box

Nothing in my eyes.