amd-xgbe ("ax"): interface RX byte counter stays 0 (HWSTATS)

[ThomasE]

amd-xgbe ("ax"): interface RX byte counter stays 0 (HWSTATS) — Reporting → Traffic shows no download

On a 10G WAN port driven by the AMD amd-xgbe driver (interface "ax"), the interface RX byte counter stays at ~0 even under several Gbit/s of inbound (routed) load, while TX is counted correctly. As a result Reporting → Traffic shows almost no "In" throughput even though the line is saturated. The data plane is fine — routing carries the traffic and a packet capture sees it — only the accounting is wrong. It looks like the driver advertises HWSTATS but never populates the RX hardware statistics.

Environment

OPNsense 26.4.1p2 (Business Edition)
NIC: AMD 10GbE — pciconf: ax1@pci0:8:0:5 vendor=0x1022 device=0x1458
Driver: amd-xgbe, version 1.0.3, firmware 16.118.33
Interface role: WAN, 10GBase-SFI, link up
At capture time: several Gbit/s inbound (download), ~60-80 Mbit/s outbound
Symptom

"In (bps)" under Reporting → Traffic is essentially flat (a few hundred bps), while "Out" and the pcap-based "Top hosts in" graph show real traffic. netstat confirms it, RX bytes stay at ~0 while TX is fine:

Code Select Expand

netstat -I ax1 -w 1 (WAN, under load) input ax1 output packets errs idrops bytes packets errs bytes colls 2 0 0 158 13340 0 7568812 0 1 0 0 64 11611 0 7484747 0 2 0 0 128 11775 0 7553285 0
~1-2 pkt/s and ~64-158 B/s inbound is physically impossible for a link doing multi-Gbit of routed traffic. The packets clearly arrive (routing works, tcpdump/iftop see them), they are simply not counted.

Evidence it is a counter issue, not the data path

sysctl dev.ax.1 — the driver's per-queue byte counters all read 0, including TX, which is demonstrably active at the iflib layer:

Code Select Expand

rxq_bytes[0..11]: 0 txq_bytes[0..11]: 0 ... dev.ax.1.iflib.txq00.txq_processed: 1187888204 (TX is flowing) dev.ax.1.iflib.txq00.r_enqueues: 1160571460 ... dev.ax.1.drv_info: driver: amd-xgbe version: 1.0.3 firmware-version: 16.118.33
ifconfig shows the HWSTATS capability set on the interface (IPs/MAC redacted):

Code Select Expand

ax1: flags=1008943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500 options=4800028<VLAN_MTU,JUMBO_MTU,HWSTATS,MEXTPG> media: Ethernet autoselect (10GBase-SFI <full-duplex,rxpause,txpause>) status: active
My reading: because HWSTATS is set, the stack pulls the interface counters from the driver's hardware statistics instead of counting in software. The driver's RX hardware byte counter appears to stay at 0 (TX works), so if_ibytes never increments — hence the dead "In" graph.

Already ruled out

Suricata / IDS: never enabled on this interface.
Offloading: hardware checksum, TSO and LRO already disabled; VLAN hardware filtering disabled.
Not a routed-subnet / transfer-net artefact: that only affects the pcap-based top-talkers list; the plain interface byte counter is a separate mechanism.

Questions

Is this a known limitation of amd-xgbe in the current base, and is it fixed in 26.7 / FreeBSD 15.1?
Is there a supported way to make the stack fall back to software counting — e.g. is "ifconfig ax1 -hwstats" honoured by this driver, and can it be made persistent (and is it safe to toggle on a production link)?
Is anyone running a WAN on an "ax" port with correct Reporting → Traffic (RX) numbers?

Thanks in advance.

diagnostics are from my own box, write-up is AI-assisted — happy to post more output.

[BrandyWine]

Is the cpu being fully offloaded to the NIC now?

You can try disabling this feature for individual NIC functions using sysctl.
Or use ifconfig ax1 -tso4 -tso6

So 1st try that.

To me it just sounds like a driver issue.