Where's my GigE?!

[jvp]

Well ain't 'dat a bitch! I just replaced the unmanaged/dumb GigE switches throughout my house with managed Cisco "small business" switches. These are ones I can log into (unfortunately: only through a web GUI... bleah) and actually look at port settings, among other things. One of the first interesting things I noticed: my new gaming rig's GigE connection is only auto-neg'ing to 100M/full.

In looking around on various forums, it appears as though Realtek's GigE ports (I have one on my motherboard) are hyper-sensitive to cable types. Cat5 cable is usually good enough for GigE. In fact, all of the rest of the Cat5 connections to that switch have negotiated themselves up to 1000M/full. But the piece of shit GigE on my gaming rig won't.

Apparently I'll need to go get a length of Cat5e or Cat6 in order to get GigE speeds from that machine. It's nothing I can't handle, just: annoying.

Fucking Realtek. Sucky long-time.

jas

 

[BOT#00001]

You just need cat6 patch cables, or are is your house wired for cat5 right now?

 

[jvp]

You just need cat6 patch cables, or are is your house wired for cat5 right now?

Just a patch cable, about 25ft or so in length. Already ordered through AMZN since it's $5 there, shipped for free. I can wait.

jas

 

[BOT#00001]

Just a patch cable, about 25ft or so in length. Already ordered through AMZN since it's $5 there, shipped for free. I can wait.

jas

Hopefully that's the issue. I've never heard of it do that though? Usually you just get a slightly slower Mbps if you use a lower quality cat cable.

 

[jvp]

I've never heard of it do that though? Usually you just get a slightly slower Mbps if you use a lower quality cat cable.

This is the first I've heard of this, too, but in searching on the intardwebz, it appears as though I'm not the first to run into it. It seems to be a Realtek issue specifically; I bet if I purchased a $25 Intel NIC for the rig, it would autoneg right up to 1000M/full without a problem using the same cable. I'll try the $5 cable first, then I'll look to an add-in NIC.

jas

 

[Bob369963]

You would be correct Jas. Not sure if Realtek is ever going to address the problem. I've read it's only a driver issue, but I just stay away from their NIC's.

 

[RainMotorsports]

Jason surely you know about monoprice? I grabbed a Cat 6e 100 footer from them because I didn't need a spool or anything cut it into three sections and ran from the basement up the sidewall into my room. I do believe they sell the cheap shit as well as the good shit, but they sell good shit for cheap. Only deal is they charge full on shipping.

 

[jvp]

You would be correct Jas. Not sure if Realtek is ever going to address the problem. I've read it's only a driver issue, but I just stay away from their NIC's.

Yeah Bobby, they're not well liked in the computing world, but they're cheap and universally installed on a lot of motherboards. Fortunately, Cat6 cabling is dirt cheap and a good Intel NIC is pretty inexpensive as well.

As an aside, I remember when I built a server for VMWare here a couple of years ago. I used an ASUS motherboard with 2 onboard Realtek GigE NICS. When I tried to install VMWare's ESXi hypervisor, it looked at the server hardware and said: "You don't have any network interface cards. Installation halted." Apparently VMWare specifically removed Realtek drivers from their Linux kernel because of the lack of quality. I had to buy two Intel NICs to get the installation going again.

jas

 

[jvp]

I grabbed this screen shot of the switch management UI:

You'll see 3 of the connections auto-neg'd to 100M/full:

• ventriloquist (the AT&T 3G microcell)
• printer
• scarecrow (gaming rig)

The first two only have 100Mb ports on them, so they auto-neg'd properly. The scarecrow entry, however, should have come up as 1000M/full like the rest of them did.