Intel E810 (Columbiaville): Experiences?

[msi]

Hi there

I wanted to ask if anyone could share some experiences on the new PCIe 4.0 800er series Intel NICs as I've only found someone having intially had some performance issues with them in this thread: https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=24302

Global delivery chain issues have now come to the point where obtaining known-to-work Intel 700 series NICs has become difficult. After considering more readily available Broadcom NICs instead, I realized that Netmap support, as required by Suricata and Zenarmor looks dim with bnxt(4) based on reading FreeBSD manpages. So I was looking at the 800 series cards like the E810-XXVDA2.

However I'm partially burned by the ugly issues the earlier firmware I've initially faced when I got the first 700 series NICs. Most of these stability issues and bugs I've faced on FreeBSD, Linux and Windows are now fixed by current firmware (which for some OEM cards can be difficult) and drivers. They are not new anymore and usually they are now "OK to work with" in my opinion.

The 800 series however are using new chips have more feature-rich firmware (read: potential for new bugs) and use a new driver ice(4) instead...

[msi]

Short update: So far said E810 has been recognized by 22.1, not 21.7: A quick look into the commit history showed that the ice(4) driver was only part of FreeBSD starting with 12.2 and 13.0. OPNsense 21.7 was still based on HardenedBSD 12.1 which in turn was based on FreeBSD 12.1. 22.7 is likely going to be rebased on the latest FreeBSD 13-STABLE branch and will contain a newer version, while 22.1 ships ice(4) 0.28.1.

What I can confirm is that the like the 700 series (Fortville) they also have an integrated LLDP agent which does interfere with lldpd when instaled on the OS side. I prefer to disable via UEFI in this case. This is an unbranded Intel card, so options might be different for people that might have an OEM card.

I can't share any experiences yet on how fast and / or how stable it works though, if time permits and I remember, I'll share updates.

[opnfwb]

I don't have experiences with this NIC chipset but I wanted to just say thanks for posting. Info like this is great to have and will help others plan future builds/upgrades.