Linksys EG1032 PCI Gigabit card help *SOLVED*
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I am running PFSense 1.2 on a P4 @ 1.5GHz w/ 384MB RDRAM 10GB 2xLinksys EG1032 gigabit cards. My problem is that after a while of heavy useage the WAN card looses connection with the cable modem. The light on the cable modem will go out for a few seconds, come back on, then go out and it does this until the system is rebooted. I also have to reboot the cable modem while the computer is rebooting to get the connection to come back on. When its working it works very nicely, but when this starts to happen the connection will hiccup for a while, then just stop. I've tried switching the cards from wan to lan, and the lan to wan, but that made no difference. I also moved them around in the PCI slots to 2 more unused slots, but no change. I've also reloaded PFSense, but it did not help the problem. I changed out PFSense for a WRT54G and it worked great and did not develop any problems, so that rules out the cable modem. The problem started when I upgraded the NIC cards in the computer to the current ones. Does anybody have any ideas what could be wrong? The cards are listed on the site as being compatible, so I don't know where else to look. ???
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Are there any errors/incrementing errors shown in the Interfaces page or any messages shown in the System Log page?
Not sure if you tried this, but do you have another NIC (not the same make/model) that you can use as a substitute to your NIC connecting to the cable modem? It seems that the cable modem is working fine when its connected to the Linksys router, but could be something with the PC (can't rule out anything at this point). -
Sounds like a driver glitch, I'd try this.
http://cvs.pfsense.com/~sullrich/testing_images/6/FreeBSD_RELENG_6_3/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/that's 1.2 based on the newer FreeBSD 6.3, which has a number of updated network drivers.
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Are there any errors/incrementing errors shown in the Interfaces page or any messages shown in the System Log page?
Not sure if you tried this, but do you have another NIC (not the same make/model) that you can use as a substitute to your NIC connecting to the cable modem? It seems that the cable modem is working fine when its connected to the Linksys router, but could be something with the PC (can't rule out anything at this point).Yes, I had another Linksys PCI card that I borrowed and it worked for about a week with no problems. I put the cards I have back in and within 2 days I had to reboot it.
@cmb:
Sounds like a driver glitch, I'd try this.
http://cvs.pfsense.com/~sullrich/testing_images/6/FreeBSD_RELENG_6_3/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/that's 1.2 based on the newer FreeBSD 6.3, which has a number of updated network drivers.
I've upgraded to this version and we will see what happens. The upgrade went very smoothly, and it didn't loose my settings, but I have a backup of them on my PC just in case. Thanks for your help, hopefully this will be the end of the problems.
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Some revisions of the EG1032 are Realtek NICs - these will have identifiers of re and a number, so re0 and re1 if both are Realtek. If you search the forums for Realtek, you will see that Realtek NICs don't perform as well under FreeBSD as some other brands.
If you land up replacing the NICs, a pair of Intel 1000/GT Desktop adapters wouldn't cost much. FreeBSD, and hence pfSense, will take advantage of the features on the more expensive Intel server adapters, but if your budget will only stretch to the desktop adapters, they're still a good choice especially for a relatively light workload.
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Well, as of right now the computer is working great. I have not had the problems any more. The identifiers are re0 and re1, so they are the realtek cards. After the upgrade I have not had a single problem with the computer. I am getting my full speed from my internet. This is for a home office, not a data center or anything like that. I move about 220-260GB total a month, and since the upgrade everything is very smooth. The update fixed everything, but if I do have to replace the cards in the future I will keep in mind that the realtek cards don't work as great as the intel cards, but maybe by then that will be fixed, who knows? Since everything is working great, I'm going to mark this thread as solved. Thanks for your help everyone. ;D