Hardware

I have the following hardware in my m0n0wall running version 1.3b14

Supermicro MBD-PDSBM-LN2+-O LGA 775 Intel 946GZ Micro ATX Server Motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2GHz Dual-Core Processor.
Motherboard has dual Intel PRO/1000 Interfaces

WAN Interface (em1) => Comcast modem (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
LAN Interface (em0) => Dell PowerConnect 5448 (100baseTX <full-duplex>)

Why does my LAN Interface (em0) auto negotiate at 100M full-duplex instead of 1000M full-duplex?
The switchport on my Dell PowerConnect 5448 switch connected to the m0n0wall has not been forced at this point
and is set to auto, basically out of the box.

Also all my VLAN's auto negotiated to 100baseTX <full-duplex>.  Shouldn't they also be negotiating to 1000M full?

I was hoping I would get better throughput from VLAN to VLAN than 5MB.

Can anyone help?

I will try forcing the switchport to 1000M full-duplex that is connected to the LAN Interface (em0) to see if that fixes the problem.

No luck, I forced the switch port on my Dell PowerConnect 5448 to 1000f and the LAN (em0) link lights went out.  I even rebooted the firewall and the LAN port still wouldn't negotiate to 1000f.

Can anyone help?

Wow, you should be getting MAD bandwidth through a router like that.  I just have an AMD K-old old old something(modified Firebox 2 plus) or the other with three 100Mbps ports, and I get about...well...8MB a second.

You might want to check your Bios config, see if there's anything there that'd make Unix unhappy.


OH, but now that I see you're hooking up 100baseT devices to a 1000baseT port, it will -always- auto negotiate to 100.  period.  You can't overclock a 100 port somehow....I hope.....that I'm aware.....

No decent god fearing NIC would let you overclock your connection speed.



Take out the 100baseT stuff, then you'll see some serious speed....but if you're trying to get 1000baseT speed through a 100baseT modem, which doesn't even operate at full 100, I'm sure....it's not going to happen.

Were you trying to do something else or were you just THAT ambitious?


Good luck.

Let me clarify,

I know the WAN port on my firewall is obviously never going to negotiate to 1000f when a 100baseT Comcast Modem device is plugged into it.  I've got that part figured out.

However the LAN port (which is a separate port and should have the ability to negotiate at a different speed aside from its neighboring interface) is plugged into a 1000baseT PowerConnect 5448 (essentially 48 x 1000f ports). 

With my multiple VLAN's setup, all traffic from VLAN1 destine for VLAN2 must travel through in and out of the LAN port.  It never even hits the WAN port.  The LAN port is the bottleneck as it negotiates at 100f and not 1000f.

The goal is to set the LAN port to 1000f.

Here's some additional info about the Intel NIC's on this Supermicro motherboard.

Dual Intel 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controllers support 2 Gigabit LAN ports (*For
PDSBM-LN2/LN2+ only)

I also read a post a few weeks back from someone (sorry I'll try to find the source) that the Intel (em) driver for FreeBSD is basically crap.  He highly recommended Broadcom NIC's over Intel as the driver was far superior. 

Hope that gives a better picture.  I'm still planning on attempting to adjust the speed by editing the config.xml using these instructions "http://doc.m0n0.ch/handbook/faq-hiddenopts.html".  I'll keep this post updated as possible. 

If anyone has some specifics as what to edit and try, please contribute.  Thanks

I found and resolved this problem.  First test was to plug the LAN (em0) port into another (cheap) gigabit switch.  During that test, the LED's next to the LAN (em0) port (on the m0n0wall) changed from light amber to dark orange and the (cheap) gigabit switch indicated that the port was communicating at 1000f.  I then looked at the Interfaces on the m0n0wall and the LAN (em0) Interface media section now reflected 1000baseTX <full-duplex>.   

Second item was to look at the switchport speed negotiation on the Dell PowerConnect 5448.

Apparently the duplex command that I tried before is not the correct command, but the "negotiate" command was needed to force the switchport to 1000f.  After plugging the m0n0wall back into the PowerConnect switchport, I executed the "negotiate 1000f" command on the switchport and that did it.

Hope this helps.