[etherlab-users] NIC Hardware compatibility

[Thomas Nelson]

On Jun 7, 2012, at 11:24 AM, William Montgomery wrote:

> Can anyone recommend specific NIC manufacturer and model that works well with the current EtherCAT master?
> 
> I have used the Intel PRO 1000 for a few years with good success but the driver doesnt work for me in recent kernels (2.6.37).  I have seen other list traffic that indicates Realtek chipsets give good performance but my recent experience with Netgear GA311 (r8169) has lots of datagram UNMATCHED and datagram TIMEOUTS.

I was recently testing a new industrial SBC with Realtek 8111 NICs for a client and discovered the same thing.  The cause is a line that was must have been inadvertently dropped in the merge-up from 2.6.33.

Here's the context diff for the patch:

*** r8169-2.6.37-ethercat.c	2012-01-10 05:03:51.000000000 -0500
--- r8169-2.6.37-ethercat-fixed.c	2012-06-07 13:17:55.018452791 -0400
***************
*** 4598,4603 ****
--- 4598,4604 ----
  				prefetch(data);
  				ecdev_receive(tp->ecdev, data, pkt_size);
  				dma_sync_single_for_device(d, addr, pkt_size, DMA_FROM_DEVICE);
+ 				rtl8169_mark_to_asic(desc, rx_buf_sz);
  			} else {
  				skb = rtl8169_try_rx_copy(tp->Rx_databuff[entry],
  							  tp, pkt_size, addr);

Without that line, the HW is never told to advance to the next buffer descriptor.

My apologies to the developers - I haven't had the opportunity to send this in to the list yet.

Tom Nelson
Consulting Engineer
Granite Computer Sciences, LLC







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