Does Realtek RTL8110S and RTL8100C work ?

Does Realtek RTL8110S and RTL8100C work ?

[Markus Feldmann]

Hi All,

i am thinking about buying a Mini-ITX Server with some Realtek Cips on 
the PCI Network Devices. These are
Realtek RTL8110S
Realtek RTL8100C

The Mini-ITX is a Jetway JNF92.
Does anybody know whether they work good or should i keep the hands off 
these?

regards Markus

Re: Does Realtek RTL8110S and RTL8100C work ?

[Jan Ceuleers]

Markus Feldmann wrote:
> i am thinking about buying a Mini-ITX Server with some Realtek Cips on
> the PCI Network Devices. These are
> Realtek RTL8110S
> Realtek RTL8100C
> 
> The Mini-ITX is a Jetway JNF92.
> Does anybody know whether they work good or should i keep the hands off
> these?

I've got a Jetway J7F4 which has two Realtek RTL8110S devices. They look like this:

# lshw
(...)
        *-network:0
             description: Ethernet interface
             product: RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet
             vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
             physical id: 9
             bus info: pci@0000:00:09.0
             logical name: eth0
             version: 10
             serial: 00:30:18:a4:e4:a4
             size: 1GB/s
             capacity: 1GB/s
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 66MHz
             capabilities: bus_master ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
             configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full ip=192.168.1.11 latency=64 link=yes maxlatency=64 mingnt=32 module=r8169 multicast=yes port=MII speed=1GB/s
        *-network:1
             description: Ethernet interface
             product: RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet
             vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
             physical id: b
             bus info: pci@0000:00:0b.0
             logical name: eth1
             version: 10
             serial: 00:30:18:a4:e4:a5
             size: 100MB/s
             capacity: 1GB/s
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 66MHz
             capabilities: bus_master ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
             configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full ip=10.20.0.3 latency=64 link=yes maxlatency=64 mingnt=32 module=r8169 multicast=yes port=MII speed=100MB/s
(...)

eth1 has auto-negotiated 100Mbit/s because it is hard-wired to a device which isn't gigabit-capable.

Cheers, Jan

Re: Does Realtek RTL8110S and RTL8100C work ?

[Markus Feldmann]

Thanks for you answer Jan,

do you know the developer e-mail adress?
So 1000Mbit/s is not possible at the moment, but does it work stable?

regards Markus

Re: Does Realtek RTL8110S and RTL8100C work ?

[Jan Ceuleers]

Markus Feldmann wrote:
> Thanks for you answer Jan,
> 
> do you know the developer e-mail adress?
> So 1000Mbit/s is not possible at the moment, but does it work stable?
> 
> regards Markus

Markus,

You misunderstood. The first of the interfaces I listed is operating at 1Gbit/s; the second is only operating at 100Mbit/s because the device it is connected to (on the other end of the Ethernet cable) is not capable of anything faster.

I have no reliability issues with these network interfaces. Note though that my mainboard is quite low-end (Via C7 1.5GHz), so that the network interfaces never really get stressed.

Jan

Re: Does Realtek RTL8110S and RTL8100C work ?

[Markus Feldmann]

Jan Ceuleers schrieb:
> Markus,
> 
> You misunderstood. The first of the interfaces I listed is operating at 1Gbit/s; the second is only operating at 100Mbit/s because the device it is connected to (on the other end of the Ethernet cable) is not capable of anything faster.
> 
> I have no reliability issues with these network interfaces. Note though that my mainboard is quite low-end (Via C7 1.5GHz), so that the network interfaces never really get stressed.
> 
> Jan
Thanks Jan,

do you knonw who is the maintainer for this network device? Or in where 
can i get more information?

regards Markus

Re: Does Realtek RTL8110S and RTL8100C work ?

[Jan Ceuleers]

Markus Feldmann wrote:
> do you knonw who is the maintainer for this network device? Or in where
> can i get more information?

Markus,

As it happens there is a lot of discussion about stability issues with this NIC in recent[1] kernel versions right here on this list at the moment.

Participants in those discussions include Francois Romieu, Timo Teräs and others. See threads "r8169 mac reading/writing broken", "r8169: fix broken register writes", "r8169: enable 64-bit DMA by default for PCI Express devices".


[1]: more recent than I am using on that machine, which is 2.6.27 (Ubuntu 9.04).

Jan