Hardware

Hi everybody! I'm planning to buy a EPIA CL6000E Mini-ITX board for m0n0wall, but I saw the two network adaptors on the board were VIA VT6103 and VT6105. I'm not sure if these two network chips fully supported by m0nowall? I could not find any information in the m0n0 handbook for these two chips. Does anybody know if I can run m0n0 on this board? Thanks!

I am also searching for an answer to this question. After a couple of hours of tedious research I've managed to conclude that the VT6103/VT6105 are probably supported.

A user on the mailing list here: http://m0n0.ch/wall/list/showmsg.php?id=184/22 claims to have m0n0wall (ver 1.11) working on the VIA EPIA PD-6000E which according to the manual here: http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainboards/downloads.jsp?motherboard_id=241 uses the 6103/6105 combination.

It would be really good to get complete confirmation that the current version of m0n0wall supports these chips though.

There are lots of dual-nic VIA ITX boards that look absolutely ideal for running m0n0wall.

I'll report back with any other info I come across.

At version 1.11 m0n0wall was (probably) running on FreeBSD 4.10 which claims support for the VT6105 chip (here: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.10R/hardware-i386.html) but, just like the other FreeBSD hardware guides it doesnt mention the VT6103.

Hmmm.....

Another guy around the same time claiming to use the PD6000: http://s0.m0n0.ch/wall/list/showmsg.php?id=195/21

Edit: Apparently the PD6000 doesnt perform well under BSD: http://www.fixya.com/support/t167617-via_vt6103_support_via_epia_pd

100mbit NIC not managing more than 20mbit? Not so great.


Guy claiming to use the PD1000: http://m0n0.ch/wall/list/showmsg.php?id=118/48

Shame there's no recent info, pulling posts from 5/6 years ago isnt particularly reasurring.

I've just bought the board, so I'll report back to say if it works.

I've tried with m0n0wall v1.31 and only one of the two onboard NICs is detected. It is (incorrectly) detected as a VIA VT6102 Rhine II, which must have something to do with it.

I will post another thread to try and solve this issue.

However, the detected interface works perfectly and I am able to log into the web interface, ping etc with no problems.

On second reboot, BOTH NICS WORK. Success!

Using the VIA EPIA CL6000E, with the VIA VT6103 and VT6105 Rhine II and Rhine III drivers (vr0 and vr1) works with m0n0wall v1.31.

To hook in on the VIA motherboards with dual NICs, I got a JetWay J7F4K with dual  RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet. It boots m0n0wall just fine, and I can download at the full 120Mbit/s. Very close to 14MByte/s on tests.
However, the WAN side is very unstable and keeps dropping the connection randomly.
Oddly the inside stays alive all the time.

At the moment I've been running a stable Gentoo installation on it since close to a year now I think.
Never a problem on either NICs.

I am looking for a Atom board with daughterboard addition for Intel NICs, but that won't be exactly cheap. Again...