Realtek RTL8125 2.5Gbps Ethernet

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https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/2...ream-realtek-launching-rtl8125-mobo-chip.html
http://www.realtek.com/press/newsViewOne.aspx?NewsID=454&Langid=1&PNid=0&PFid=1&Level=1

Are realtek ethernet chips fast and reliable with freenas?

These upcoming 2.5Gbps ethernet chips would eliminate the bottleneck transferring from a single 3.5" 7200rpm mechanical drive to another on a different computer via ethernet as the max speed of existing mechanical drives is ~240MB/s, this chip should support ~320MB/s.
 

Chris Moore

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Are realtek ethernet chips fast and reliable with freenas?
Generally, not. They don't provide open-source drivers so something must be developed independently and it is usually not very good.
These upcoming 2.5Gbps ethernet chips would eliminate the bottleneck transferring from a single 3.5" 7200rpm mechanical drive to another on a different computer via ethernet as the max speed of existing mechanical drives is ~240MB/s, this chip should support ~320MB/s.
If that is what you want, there is a lot (vast quantities) of used enterprise networking gear available in the secondary market for a very low price. I just picked up a 48 port switch that has four 10Gb ports for only $125 and network cards to go with it for around $25 each. It is easy to setup, fully supported and very fast. There is no need to obtain one of these inferior 'new' cards.
 

Chris Moore

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PS. You may not find exactly the same gear in the UK, but I can point you at the exact items I bought if you are interested in looking for similar.
 

Chris Moore

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AlexMata

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Just to share my experience, I have bought a couple of ethernet cards with the RTL8125 chip. Unfortunately it doesn't work with Freenas but between 2 computers with Windows 10 I get transferring speeds of about 280MB/s.
 

ermac318

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Any update here? It looks like Linux and OpenBSD are shipping with support for the RTL8125B now.
 

AlexMata

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I am on Freenas 11.3 and still no support for the RTL8125 . I hope this will change with 12.0.
 

Redcoat

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Last edited:

Yorick

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I hope this will change with 12.0.

I expect it won’t. I see no mention of this for FreeBSD 12.1, though OpenBSD seems to have gained driver support not quite a year ago.

re(4) is not in great shape, and unless a corporation wishes to sponsor the work, I doubt it’ll get in great shape.
 

Frank Zhang

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The link tobi sent worked for me. I didn't compile it from source but directly grabbed the binary.

Under 11.3 U3 the module can be loaded automatically upon boot (with loader.conf edited), but for some reason I had to manually load it after a fresh installation of 11.3 U4 using
Code:
kldload if_re


Afterwards, it works as intended: it can be detected as a physical network interface and the speed can reach 2.5GBit (once cached, otherwise not so stable, and I don't know if it's related to my non-raid, HDD only setup). The only client of this NIC is my Windows 10 PC with a Realtek 8156 USB dongle (yet another 2.5G NIC). No thorough tests was performed, but in my case, speed can be maintained at 200 MB/s (plus/minus 20) copying from a HDD inside WindowsPC to a Samba HDD inside FreeNAS.
 

Magnetz

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I have the same setup. Rtl8125b PCI-e card in freenas and rtl8156b USB 3.0 under windows

I get 2.35Gbit from Windows to freenas and 1.98Gbit from Freenas to Windows iperf3

More than my HDDs can sustain. These cards are $17-$19 each, no briainer.


The FreeBSD driver is: version:1.96.04
From the above link I assume they fixed the reverse bandwidth problem in the later drivers on Linux (2.13+? driver)

200-230MB/sec over SMB

Meauring at the wall outlet:
The rtl8125b added 2-4W idle power usage.
A total of +10W during writes which would include extra HDD usage (2x3.5" 5400RPM)
Using iperf over 2.5GbE uses an extra 6w compared to 1GbE.

So 2-4W idle + another 6W load over 10m cat5e
 
Last edited:

Kris Heslop

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Generally, not. They don't provide open-source drivers so something must be developed independently and it is usually not very good.

If that is what you want, there is a lot (vast quantities) of used enterprise networking gear available in the secondary market for a very low price. I just picked up a 48 port switch that has four 10Gb ports for only $125 and network cards to go with it for around $25 each. It is easy to setup, fully supported and very fast. There is no need to obtain one of these inferior 'new' cards.
Chris, how loud and what kind of power draw do you have with those 10GbE switches? My system is in my den and tv room.
 

Jasse Jansson

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If that is what you want, there is a lot (vast quantities) of used enterprise networking gear available in the secondary market for a very low price. I just picked up a 48 port switch that has four 10Gb ports for only $125 and network cards to go with it for around $25 each. It is easy to setup, fully supported and very fast. There is no need to obtain one of these inferior 'new' cards.
I'm interested to know what hardware you bought.

Is there a list somewhere of supported 10Gb network hardware ?
 

LasseKongo

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If you want 10G gear that is new and not that expensive, also look at Miktotik switches. If you are fine with 4 ports, the CRS305-1G-4S+IN is a nice option @$150, or the 8-port CRS309-1G-8S+IN for MSRP $270. Both these switches have passive cooling. I use the CRS317-1G-16S+RM myself, and is happy with it. As long as you only need layer 2 switching, Miktotik performs well.

For my Truenas build I a use Mellanox Connect-X 2 nic witch worked out-of-the box, picked up a bunch on ebay for like $15 a piece.
 

Constantin

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The 8125 Realtek chipset is now officially. supported as of 12u4 but apparently needs two tunables set to use the newly-adopted Realtek drives. See here
 
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