OPNsense Forum

English Forums => Hardware and Performance => Topic started by: pkirsche on May 24, 2020, 05:21:57 pm

Title: Static USB ethernet adapter assignment
Post by: pkirsche on May 24, 2020, 05:21:57 pm
Hello Opnsense Community,

I am new to opensense and started by building a firewall solution for my home based on a shuttle PC.
With my little linux experience (but unfortunately no knowledge about bsd) I got the opnsense running very well.

But you might know, there is always some optimization possible and therefore I decided to separate my guest wifi from the rest of my lan. And also I added aother dmz-like network for my wireless router as secondary gateway.

But to make it short, I have the setup running with two additional usb 3.0 ethernet adapters from same manufacturer. I know, a static buildin ethernet port would be the best solution but its just for private and I found two adapters working well and with great speed, so that part is working as expected.

Now to my problem:
The two usb ethernet adapters are mixed on bootup randomly, so I got ue0 and ue1 on the other adapter with nearly every boot.

I already tried to add the delayed boot plugin, but thats not making a difference to the behavior beside it delays boottime :)

So maybe (and I'd be really happy if at least anyone would try) you can help me to get a static assignment of my two usb ethernet adapters.
I don't really need a script making this dynamically, just the two devices.

Is there any way to add the MAC address of the adapters to a file or maybe read a kind of hardware id to assign it static to ue0 and ue1?

I'm not afraid of hacking something inside files or shell, if neccessary :)

Due to the fact that I am using exactly the same adapters, would it make any difference to use another manufacturer for one of the adapters? As far as I've read, in the end it's the chipset (in my case a realtek) that makes the game and not the manufacturer. But if it makes any differences, I am of course willing to buy one.

If you need any further information or command output, don't hesitate to ask.
I am running the latest opnsense version (OPNsense 20.1.7-amd64)

Thanks very very much for your assistance.
Title: Re: Static USB ethernet adapter assignment
Post by: Taomyn on June 09, 2020, 11:29:28 am
Hi,

I've kind of been forced into using USB as a short term solution to losing the NIC daughterboard of my firewall while I wait for a replacement system, a completely new box, and haven't had this issue so far although things have been a little confusing. My experience has been:

* Using Realtek devices, tried 2 x USB3 and 1 x USB2, I see no media information i.e. it doesn't tell me the connection speed.
* Using another USB2 device, was not Intel but I don't recall the name other than it started with "E", did display the media information but was limited to 100Mbit and proved unreliable - kept locking up and needed to be rebooted frequently.
* Using Realtek USB3 devices I see no speed greater than 100Mbit of my 500Mbit line (WAN is the still working onboard 1Gbit NIC) even though I confirm on the switch where it connects to that the link is indeed 1000Mbit.  There is no option in the interfaces GUI to force a speed either.
* Rebooting has not seen a switch between already installed devices at least so far, but things do go weird when you switch them out e.g. UE0 and UE1 are connected, shtudown, switch UE0 for another adapter, reboot, UE1 becomes UE0 and the new one takes over UE1. I then have to switch them around in the GUI.
* The terminal menu item "Assign interfaces" does not let me choose my WAN connection i.e. in the main GUI it's PPPOE0, but that gets rejected as invalid, so I have to choose "IGB0_VLAN_35" which does not work, wait for access to the GUI and switch it to PPPOE0.

I have another 1000Mbit cable USB3 adapter on order for today or tomorrow but I have no clue what chipset it will be.