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by dpwm 2598 days ago
Having just been the victim of the Intel I219 on linux, and a heavy user of OpenWRT, my initial response when I saw the logo was pure horror.

For those that don't know – as I didn't – the hardware behind Intel's more recent ethernet chipsets seem only to be tested and supported on the most basic of networking configurations. As soon as you add something like a macvlan, it is apparently normal to expect problems like dropped packets and module unloading every few GB. One of the solutions seems to be to disable offloading [0], but for me that just bought me an order of magnitude more time before the hang.

However, this does look like good work – and I have to celebrate the contribution from the devs on this one. There are huge gains to be had by network offloading – and perhaps in time Intel's hardware division will iron out the problems with their chipsets.

[0] https://sourceforge.net/p/e1000/bugs/571/
1 comments
voltagex_ 2598 days ago
That bug is from 2017 on an older driver. Have you tried the same thing with igb on a recent kernel?

    $ ethtool -i enp0s20f1
    driver: igb
    version: 5.4.0-k
    firmware-version: 0.0.0
    expansion-rom-version:
    bus-info: 0000:00:14.1
    supports-statistics: yes
    supports-test: yes
    supports-eeprom-access: yes
    supports-register-dump: yes
    supports-priv-flags: yes
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dpwm 2598 days ago
No. If it was my own machine I'd certainly try it out – but it's work's machine running Debian stretch, so we switched to a difference NIC with a Realtek interface which has given no problems and meets our performance requirements.

To be clear, this appears to be a problem with the newness of the chipset and the time it takes to get drivers into upstream – the chipset we switched to had its fair share of teething problems when it first came out.

Intel had a long-standing reputation for rock-solid network cards with great open-source drivers ready the day of release – a reputation Realtek has never really had.

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luckman212 2597 days ago
This is the first time I've heard of switching TO a Realtek chipset to solve a networking problem.
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