General Questions

Hello,
       My company was just able to get fiber installed from Comcast, getting us a 25MB connection.  However, the problem I'm running into is that they require the WAN port of my Soekris net5501 to be set to 100MB full-duplex no-auto.  Unfortunately there isn't any way to do this through the M0n0wall gui.  However, after doing some digging I found this http://doc.m0n0.ch/handbook/faq-hiddenopts.html that says I should be able to download my config file, and edit it to force my WAN to a specific media type.  However it also says I need to "Refer to the appropriate FreeBSD manpage for the driver you're using" to know what option I need to put in there.  Does anyone know how to find the FreeBSD manpage for the NIC drivers used on Soekris boxes? 

Thanks,
-Hal

How is the interface identified in either the WebGUI Interfaces: Assign network ports, or on the console?

From the interfaces(assign) window via the gui, it's listed as:

vr1(VIA VT6105M Rhine III 10/100BaseTX, xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx)

Then you would google:

FreeBSD man page vr

which leads to:

http://www.unix.com/man-page/FreeBSD/4/vr/

This may not be the man page for the version of FreeBSD your m0n0wall is built on, but it would be a good start.

I had the same problem (today) so I called Comcast Support  (1-800-741-4141) and they had a network engineer call me back and he set his interface to Auto.  My WAN interface now shows "100baseTX <full-duplex>" and everything is running great now.

Roy...

Interesting Roy,

When the Comcast engineer set mine to Auto, it helped but didn't completely fix the problem, i.e. my speed went from 4MB up/4MB down to 17MB up/13MB down.   When I connect my laptop directly with auto negotiate turned on on the laptop NIC, I get the same performance.  However, when I hook the laptop up directly with auto negotiate off hard coded to 100MB full and the Comcast Siena box set the same, I get a little more than 24MB up/24MB down.


BTW, I also sent in the same question to Soekris support and they responded with:

>Hi Hal
>
>The m0n0wall beta series has support for the "em" driver:
>
>http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=em&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+9.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html

However, I'm not running the beta version of M0n0wall, so I'm gonna try the variables this man page suggests, but not sure it will work.

Thanks for the responses,
-Hal

I'm also using a net5501 and running 1.33 embedded and get a solid 50-mbits up and down after Comcast changed their switch to auto.  Also, I'm using speedtest.comcast.net to check my speed.

Roy...

Hi Roy,
     Sounds like we have almost identical setups, other than the fact that I have a 25MB circuit from Comcast.  Do you have a Siena box delivering ethernet to your M0n0wall too?

     In any case, I got it to work, by downloading and editing the config file, adding 100baseTX to the mediatype and full-duplex to the mediaopts section of the WAN interface, saving and uploading back to the M0n0wall.  Thanks to all for their help!

-Hal

yes, I also have a Siena box.

Roy...