Is the Broadcom chip still a problem with FreeNAS?

[J. Greg Williams]

I'm trying to figure out why my FreeNAS box is stuck at 100mbit.

It's a stock HP N54L with 8gb of unbuffered ECC memory. This uses a Broadcom chip which I've read was an issue on FreeNAS in the past (version 0.7).

bge0: <HP NC107i PCIe Gigabit Server Adapter, ASIC rev. 0x5784100> mem 0xfe9f0000-0xfe9fffff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci2
bge0: CHIP ID 0x05784100; ASIC REV 0x5784; CHIP REV 0x57841; PCI-E
miibus0: <MII bus> on bge0
brgphy0: <BCM5784 10/100/1000baseT PHY> PHY 1 on miibus0
brgphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT, 1000baseT-master, 1000baseT-FDX, 1000baseT-FDX-master, auto, auto-flow

• All lights show gigabit between my laptop and the FreeNAS box connected to an Airport Extreme.
• There are no errors in the messages log. (Although this has stopped updating as of my update to 9.2.1.1-RELEASE)
• I am only running IPv4 although DUMMYNET seems to have initialized it (is this between communication between jails?)
• I've swapped cables to the NAS with a known good cable.

ifconfig -a shows:

[totally@freenasty ~]$ ifconfig -a
bge0: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=c0099<RXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,VLAN_HWTSO,LINKSTATE>
ether 28:92:4a:36:09:56
inet 10.0.1.11 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.1.255
nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active

netperf shows this:

​

[totally@freenasty ~]$ netperf
TCP STREAM TEST from 0.0.0.0 (0.0.0.0) port 0 AF_INET to localhost () port 0 AF_INET : histogram : interval : dirty data : demo
Recv Send Send
Socket Socket Message Elapsed
Size Size Size Time Throughput
bytes bytes bytes secs. 10^6bits/sec

65536 32768 32768 10.00 7814.72​

​

​

​

iperf shows this:

[totally@freenasty ~]$ iperf -c 10.0.1.5 -i 1
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 10.0.1.5, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 32.5 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 10.0.1.11 port 15075 connected with 10.0.1.5 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 11.1 MBytes 93.3 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 6.0- 7.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 7.0- 8.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 8.0- 9.0 sec 11.2 MBytes 94.4 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 9.0-10.0 sec 11.1 MBytes 93.3 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 112 MBytes 94.2 Mbits/sec

If the broadcom chip is still a known problem I'll pick up an Intel NIC and be done with it (suggestions welcome). Otherwise, if anyone has suggestions on what I can do to fix it given the existing hardware I'd be very happy for some tips.

Thanks,
Greg

 

[jgreco]

Not generally, but looks like something is amiss for you. You sure the laptop is actually linked at 1000? Guessing maybe not.

 

[J. Greg Williams]

Yes, as sure as I can be.
From my laptop:

en0: flags=8863<UP,BROADCAST,SMART,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
options=10b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_HWTAGGING,AV>
ether 68:5b:35:9d:98:a9
inet6 fe80::6a5b:35ff:fe9d:98a9%en0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4
inet 10.0.1.5 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.1.255
nd6 options=1<PERFORMNUD>
media: autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,flow-control,energy-efficient-ethernet>)
status: active

• Link light shows gigabit
• I am able to scp a 2.4GB file to another computer on the gigabit network at roughly 57MB/s

 

[jgreco]

Try connecting the NAS directly to the laptop.

 

[J. Greg Williams]

Good suggestion. I removed the cable from the switch and plugged it directly into my laptop. (it auto switches to crossover so I don't need a separate cable).

iperf shows this:

[totally@freenasty /mnt/Hitachi/syslog/log]$ iperf -c 10.0.1.5 -i 1
------------------------------------------------------------
Client connecting to 10.0.1.5, TCP port 5001
TCP window size: 32.5 KByte (default)
------------------------------------------------------------
[ 3] local 10.0.1.11 port 22241 connected with 10.0.1.5 port 5001
[ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth
[ 3] 0.0- 1.0 sec 111 MBytes 934 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 1.0- 2.0 sec 112 MBytes 943 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 2.0- 3.0 sec 112 MBytes 942 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 3.0- 4.0 sec 112 MBytes 941 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 4.0- 5.0 sec 112 MBytes 942 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 5.0- 6.0 sec 112 MBytes 942 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 6.0- 7.0 sec 112 MBytes 936 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 7.0- 8.0 sec 112 MBytes 942 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 8.0- 9.0 sec 112 MBytes 942 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 9.0-10.0 sec 112 MBytes 942 Mbits/sec
[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 1.09 GBytes 940 Mbits/sec

After tracing some cables I discovered one connecting two switches was only doing so at 100Mbit, My previous test was against a machine on the same switch. Thanks for suggesting the obvious. I appreciate the help and it's good to know that the broadcom drivers are fine.