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22.7 Legacy Series / Poor performance with Realtek NICs
« on: July 29, 2022, 02:38:21 am »
Hello,
I know this is an endless subject and a moving target, but I want to document my experience in any case.
I got a good deal on a mini PC with a Celeron J3455 CPU and two Realtek NICs (I think they are RTL8168). I wanted to install opnsense to replace a larger PC to reduce power consumption. I knew Intel NICs were the better choice, but I thought I would give it a try.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that a config running Suricata in IPS mode gave me 900+ Mbps on tests, but then saw that the interfaces would go down, showing "no carrier" errors after an hour or so of service. Only a reboot seemed to fix the problem. I installed the Realtek plug-in (BTW, thanks for that!) and had stable NICs that lasted days without issues, but then I could only get 400Mbps speeds. The driver was the only change.
My Internet connection is 1Gbps which means I can't use this mini PC as my firewall at the moment. Some FreeBSD forums seem to indicate that the native (re) driver has seen improvements over time, so I might be able to get speed and stability from a future version. They also mention that those improvements seem to go away between major releases.
Considering the current system's power consumption, I ordered a much more expensive mini PC with intel NICs, which I will be configuring soon. It will pay for itself eventually with power savings, but I would have preferred to be able to work with the good deal I got.
Does anyone else have similar experiences with getting only 50% speeds using the factory drivers? Can I use older drivers that perform better?
I know this is an endless subject and a moving target, but I want to document my experience in any case.
I got a good deal on a mini PC with a Celeron J3455 CPU and two Realtek NICs (I think they are RTL8168). I wanted to install opnsense to replace a larger PC to reduce power consumption. I knew Intel NICs were the better choice, but I thought I would give it a try.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that a config running Suricata in IPS mode gave me 900+ Mbps on tests, but then saw that the interfaces would go down, showing "no carrier" errors after an hour or so of service. Only a reboot seemed to fix the problem. I installed the Realtek plug-in (BTW, thanks for that!) and had stable NICs that lasted days without issues, but then I could only get 400Mbps speeds. The driver was the only change.
My Internet connection is 1Gbps which means I can't use this mini PC as my firewall at the moment. Some FreeBSD forums seem to indicate that the native (re) driver has seen improvements over time, so I might be able to get speed and stability from a future version. They also mention that those improvements seem to go away between major releases.
Considering the current system's power consumption, I ordered a much more expensive mini PC with intel NICs, which I will be configuring soon. It will pay for itself eventually with power savings, but I would have preferred to be able to work with the good deal I got.
Does anyone else have similar experiences with getting only 50% speeds using the factory drivers? Can I use older drivers that perform better?