Confirm dead NIC?

[Adcadet]

This morning I went to my PC, and it was turned off. My wife's computer was also turned off. They're on the same power outlet, and this sometimes happens and I usually blame the appartment's electricity. Start up my PC and her PC. Her PC is fine. My PC hangs during boot. Strange, it doesn't usually do that. So I un-overclock the computer, just to be safe, and it boots but reports no internet connection. I open up my Device Manager, and everything looks fine. I try to "repair" the LAN connection with no luck. The LEDs on the motherboard and router are both on per usual. I disable the ethernet controller in the Device Manager and enable it, no luck. Reboot PC, reboot router, change the port on the router I'm using, all with no luck. I uninstall the ethernet controller and then try to have Windows reinstall it - it needs a driver. So I download the driver from Asus (takes forever), let Windows install the driver, point it to the 32 bit version of nvefdxp.sys that I downloaded, it inishes nstalling it and my computer screen flashes the BSOD very briefly and the computer reboots, only to flash the BSOD again briefly during boot. If I tell Windows to use my last good configuration, and it boots fine but the NIC doesn't have a driver. I tried booting Puppy Linux from a CD, and it couldn't get an IP address from DHCP. Is there anything else I should try before I declare my NIC dead? It's the Asus P5N-E SLI with onboard Marvell 88E1116 10/100/1000 NIC.


Good thing I've got my USB wireless card handy. So, can anybody recommend a good PCI NIC, preferably one that is well supported in Linux as well? I think 10/100 is all I need.

 

[ddrueding]

I'd say that is a very nicely confirmed dead NIC. To be sure this doesn't happen again, you need a Killer NIC.(so it can defend itself)

 

[Adcadet]

The other day I was playing with Puppy Linux and the SuSE 10.2 live DVD. I think I had Puppy running on my other computer, and I know I had SuSE running on this, my NIC-killing machine, complete with an internet connection. I booted up SuSE off the DVD, and confirmed that it had no internet connection. It said I had an IP address but it also said "AsusTek MCP51 Ethernet controller not configured."

Grump.
So, are all NICs about the same these days? I want something well supported and reliable, and all else being equal, with little CPU overhead. Anybody know what the difference is between the Linksys LNE100TX and DX-E101?

 

[Fushigi]

The only other troubleshooting tip I can think of is to physically unplug power to the PC for a minute or two to clear/discharge the caps and potentially anything that may have goofed it up. Wait for the LED on the mobo to go out and then wait at least a few more seconds before reconnecting power.

 

[Chewy509]

So, can anybody recommend a good PCI NIC, preferably one that is well supported in Linux as well? I think 10/100 is all I need.

Intel PRO/100 or PRO/1000 are supported in Windows, Linux and *BSDs. The Intel's also offer TOE (TCP Offload Engine), which lowers the CPU overhead especially when using jumbo frame support on the PRO/1000's.

The downside, they are double the price of your typical cheap NIC. (Newegg - Intel PRO/1000GT Desktop OEM = ~$30).

 

[Bozo]

Intel PRO/100 or PRO/1000 are supported in Windows, Linux and *BSDs. The Intel's also offer TOE (TCP Offload Engine), which lowers the CPU overhead especially when using jumbo frame support on the PRO/1000's.

The downside, they are double the price of your typical cheap NIC. (Newegg - Intel PRO/1000GT Desktop OEM = ~$30).

In some limited testing, the XP 64bit, 2003 64bit and Vista all have drivers for Intel NICs.

Bozo :joker:

 

[Pradeep]

Does the GT class have the TCP off-load engine? I thought only the server breeds of the PRO/1000 had it?

 

[time]

I'll bet it doesn't, but more importantly, we already discussed what a wank this 'feature' is for workstations some time back.

Adcadet, are you absolutely, positively sure that none of your capacitors are bulging slightly or otherwise looking shifty? I would have bet money on a connection with those symptoms.

 

[Chewy509]

Does the GT class have the TCP off-load engine? I thought only the server breeds of the PRO/1000 had it?

Don't know about the GT's? the VM's don't, the MT's do...

Googling: Apparently the GT's don't have full TOE, but support TCP Checksum and some other TOE features, but is by all means not feature rich.

So I guess (at least for the desktop range looking quickly at Intel docs)

VM's - no TOE, VLAN or Teaming support
GT's - limited TOE, VLANs support, no teaming support
MT's - full TOE, VLAN support and teaming support with a Intel PRO/1000MT Server NIC.

 

[Adcadet]

I picked up a Linksys 10/100 NIC the other day. I thought about getting a gigabit NIC, but all my equipment is standard 100bT and I wanted to get a NIC with Linux support. When I installed it I only briefly looked at my caps, and they looked fine to me. I'll doublecheck them closer, but the computer is running fine. The installation of the NIC was, of course, damn simple. Windows didn't even ask for a driver.

So, for my learning, what are the benefits of these high end NICs?

 

[Chewy509]

So, for my learning, what are the benefits of these high end NICs?

1. Better vendor support, eg Intel has released enough docs for F/OSS drivers for Linux/*BSD. At one time Intel engineers where working on the driver with the Linux developers, to help improve the NIC drivers for Intel NICs.

2. Management/Diagnostic functionality. The NIC can report faults in the cabling, and you have access to diagnostic tools, including BIST (Built In Self Test) results.

3. More features, and hardware acceleration (which means little for a NIC). TOE (TCP Offload Engine), has the NIC perform various house-keeping items which can relieve the TCP/IP stack from performing, like checksum calculations, QOS, etc. Unfortunately, under utilised by most OSes.

4. NIC teaming (also called etherchannel), allows you to join several NICs to act like 1 big NIC. Sort of like RAID0, but for NICs. Requires a compatible switch, eg Cisco, etc. eg, you install 2x 4-port 1Gbps PRO/1000MT Server adapters into a server, and team them will give 8Gbps connection to the switch. Great for that Exchange/Lotus Notes server w/100's of concurrent connections.

5. VLAN support, which can be helpful for VM Sessions (eg VMWare) and building gateway/proxy servers.

 

[Pradeep]

From my limited understanding, whilst NIC teaming will give you a fatter pipe so to speak, it won't give you more performance for a single application (i.e. you want to copy a single large folder of images from one server to another, this will only use one gigabit connection, even if say four are teamed. The actual benefit is of course when multiple tasks are being done (which is usual in a server environment).