[eepro100] Ethernet Pro 100 driver issue

Joachim Fabini Joachim.Fabini at tuwien.ac.at
Mon Jul 16 02:29:39 PDT 2007


Hi,

maybe some years to late, but it seems like there is a minor 
issue with the Intel Ethernet Pro 100 driver on Linux. Notebook 
is a Comaq Armada M700, PIII 850 CPU (please see lspci info below). 
Kernel is a 2.6.18-8 (OpenSuSE 10.2).

Specifically, pings over a crossed patch cable to a adjacent host
report a jitter of more than 1ms (between 0,5xx ms and 1,xxx ms). 
Any other hardware that we have tested, including a 3Com or NoName 
(Surecom) PCI ethernet card in the same laptop's docking station, 
report jitter within the limits that we expect. 

Please see the attached pinglogs and hardware info.
WindowsXP reports constantly <1ms on the onboard interface, which 
points into the direction of a driver bug. Otherwise (from a user 
point of view) transfer rate and everything else seem OK.

Any hint for the reason of this strange behavior? Any workaround
that we can use (except up-to-date notebook hardware ;)?

Many thanks in advance,
best regards
Joachim

------------------------------------------------------------
1. Ping reports using docking station network card (PCI, Surecom)
   show expected values.

64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=13 ttl=64 time=0.535 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=0.536 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=15 ttl=64 time=0.530 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=0.514 ms

--- 192.168.0.3 ping statistics ---
16 packets transmitted, 16 received, 0% packet loss, time 15001ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.501/0.529/0.567/0.017 ms

------------------------------------------------------------
2. Pings using on-board network card (driver probably broken) 
(absolutely same notebook, same wire, same pinged host as in
case 1 - we just plugged the cable to the on-board card).
Ping reports 1 ms difference between pings (deterministically).

64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=24 ttl=64 time=0.545 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=25 ttl=64 time=1.75 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=26 ttl=64 time=0.543 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.3: icmp_seq=27 ttl=64 time=1.72 ms

--- 192.168.0.3 ping statistics ---
27 packets transmitted, 27 received, 0% packet loss, time 25996ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.523/1.174/2.207/0.612 ms

------------------------------------------------------------
3. LSPCI output

myhost:~ # lspci -nv 
00:00.0 Class 0600: 8086:7190 (rev 03)
        Subsystem: 0e11:b110
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64
        Memory at 50000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
        Capabilities: [a0] AGP version 1.0

00:01.0 Class 0604: 8086:7191 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64
        Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=0
        I/O behind bridge: 00002000-00002fff
        Memory behind bridge: 40000000-410fffff
        Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 38000000-380fffff

00:04.0 Class 0607: 104c:ac1b (rev 03)
        Subsystem: 0e11:b113
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 11
        Memory at 41100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=05, sec-latency=176
        Memory window 0: 30000000-31fff000 (prefetchable)
        Memory window 1: 32000000-33fff000
        I/O window 0: 00001000-000010ff
        I/O window 1: 00001400-000014ff
        16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001

00:04.1 Class 0607: 104c:ac1b (rev 03)
        Subsystem: 0e11:b113
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 11
        Memory at 41180000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Bus: primary=00, secondary=06, subordinate=09, sec-latency=176
        Memory window 0: 34000000-35fff000 (prefetchable)
        Memory window 1: 36000000-37fff000
        I/O window 0: 00001800-000018ff
        I/O window 1: 00001c00-00001cff
        16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001

00:07.0 Class 0680: 8086:7110 (rev 02)
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0

00:07.1 Class 0101: 8086:7111 (rev 01) (prog-if 80 [Master])
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64
        I/O ports at 3420 [size=16]

00:07.2 Class 0c03: 8086:7112 (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at 3400 [size=32]

00:07.3 Class 0680: 8086:7113 (rev 03)
        Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 9

00:08.0 Class 0401: 125d:1978 (rev 10)
        Subsystem: 0e11:b112
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at 3000 [size=256]
        Capabilities: [c0] Power Management version 2

00:09.0 Class 0200: 8086:1229 (rev 09)
        Subsystem: 8086:2203
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 66, IRQ 11
        Memory at 41280000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        I/O ports at 3440 [size=64]
        Memory at 41200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at 38100000 [disabled] [size=1M]
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

00:09.1 Class 0700: 11c1:0445 (prog-if 00 [8250])
        Subsystem: 8086:2203
        Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at 3430 [size=8]
        Memory at 41300000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

00:10.0 Class 0200: 1516:0803
        Subsystem: 10bd:1320
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 66, IRQ 11
        I/O ports at 3800 [size=256]
        Memory at 41380000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at 38200000 [disabled] [size=64K]
        Capabilities: [88] Power Management version 2

01:00.0 Class 0300: 1002:4c4d (rev 64) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
        Subsystem: 0e11:b111
        Flags: bus master, stepping, medium devsel, latency 66, IRQ 11
        Memory at 40000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        I/O ports at 2000 [size=256]
        Memory at 41000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        [virtual] Expansion ROM at 38000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: [50] AGP version 1.0
        Capabilities: [5c] Power Management version 1

myhost:~ #



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