# Realtek R8169 lost gbit capability (though still announced)

## GODLiKE

Hello everybody,

I have a Biostar TP35-D2 board (amd64 system) with an integrated Realtek R8169 NIC. I know it's not the best of cards, and doesn't even have support for 9000 MTU, but still it worked pretty well in gigabit mode, through a 3COM gbit switch and using a Marvell skge integrated NIC on the other side. My transfers used to vary between 70~90MB/s, which was more than fine for me.

Suddenly, without previous warning, around a month and a half ago, the card lost gigabit capabilities. It is still announced when using ethtool, and the switch recognizes it is using gigabit, but the speed is limited at 100mbps. I have tried everything from going to older kernels both here and on the other side, to trying other distros (Ubuntu Karmic), but I found the problem when I connected my Thinkpad T400 from work to the same cable of the Realtek card, and ttcp (what I'm using to measure network transfer speeds, so I am sure the HDDs are not limiting) yielded a staggering ~88MB/s from the Thinkpad's Intel card to the skge card.

Has anybody experienced this behaviour? At first I thought a kernel upgrade had broken the driver, but I went back to kernels I was sure gigabit had worked before without success. I tried 2.6.{29,30,31,32,33} kernels, some Gentoo and some Vanilla, without success. Kubuntu Karmic yields same results.

Just to make it clear: all the tests I ran were using ttcp or iperf. I have a RAID0 on each PC so the gigabit is nicely saturated with it, but for testing I always use memory-to-tcp tests.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

GODLiKE

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## Mad Merlin

Have you checked the cable? If it's regular cat5, try cat5e or cat6, otherwise, just try a different cable.

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## doctork

It certainly sounds like you've proved that the problem is the card itself.  There are any number of R8169 cards available for less than $25 from Newegg, for example.  I just bought a Rosewill card from the for $16.99.  I'm using it on Foxcon Atom D510 system running Ubuntu Karmic.  Using iperf, it tested out at abou 80 Mbytes/sec.  The limiting factor was the cpu itself (according to top), rather than the card.

Edit: I meant Mbytes, not Kbytes.  :Embarassed: 

--

doc

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## eccerr0r

I've had r8169 cards fail (I own 3 PCI Rtl8169's and two onboard 8110/8169's) - two of the three 8169 boards suffer problems (one won't do Gbit anymore) and the other overheats.  The third one is still working.  The two onboard ones are OK.

Seems it's like a craps shoot, never know what you'll get.  Also people claim that 8169's use more CPU cycles than other ethernet cards ... I can't really measure that though...

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## GODLiKE

 *Mad Merlin wrote:*   

> Have you checked the cable? If it's regular cat5, try cat5e or cat6, otherwise, just try a different cable.

 

I did not mention, it's a cat 6 cable. Otherwise, read my original post: I connected the Thinkpad's gbit card to the same cable of the realtek (in other words, switched the cable from the realtek to the Thinkpad) and everything worked fine.

eccerr0r, thanks for your comments. I was aware Realtek was not exactly a quality manufacturer, but this really had me lost. Do you think it might be worth reporting this to Realtek or is it just a lost fight?

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## eccerr0r

I can't be certain it was the realtek chip that was at fault, or the actual board's manufacturer.  I have a feeling it's the board over the chip in my situation.

Who was the manufacturer of the board?

Currently my two failed RTL8169 boards:

LanReady LA-1000 Rev 1.0

Gigafast GE-1000 (? not sure, can't find this card anymore)

The working one (I think) even after several years of use:

TrendNet TEG-PCITXR (unknown rev, it's in my machine now and I'm not taking it apart to see  :Smile: )

These all are rtl8169 boards.

The onboard ones I have were on Gigabyte boards, typically 8110S's.  One of them sometimes does not come up on boot if restarted but I have a feeling it was a software WOL reconfig issue.

(BTW: I use all cat5/cat5e cabling all around for my Gbit... and also have a Broadcom Tigon3, Intel Pro/1000, Marvel Sky2 to take realtek out of the equation  :Smile:  Just that they're onboards and can't compare with PCI...)

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## GODLiKE

The Realtek card in question is integrated into my Biostar TP35-D2 motherboard. I'd say 90% of the gigabit cards I can get locally in my country (Argentina) have Realtek chips, even the Linksys ones. I was reluctant to these cards so I bought an Agere Met1310 one (just to find out that using the staging Linux kernel driver on amd64 the card is useless  :Sad: ).

Anyway, do you think different boards ought not to fail?

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## eccerr0r

I did some preliminary analysis on what the failure mode of the two dead boards are, one appeared to be board design, other I don't remember...

Technically speaking all three boards should have been "cheap" boards.

The Gigabyte motherboards technically were not "cheap" (though they may not necessarily be tier 1 boards, they shouldn't be junk...)

Just found another motherboard with an rtl8110, it's an MSI, and it's also still working after considerable use... it outlasted the PS/2 ports on the board, apparently...

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