News Intel Patches Stuttering Ethernet Issues, but It's Just a Workaround for Now

[Admin]

Intel has released a patch for intermittent Ethernet disconnections plaguing its latest controllers. It is just an EEE disabling workaround for now.

Intel Patches Stuttering Ethernet Issues, but It's Just a Workaround for Now : Read more

 

[mac_angel]

Has Intel released a set of drivers themselves? Or did MSI adjust the drivers themselves?

 

[in_the_loop]

Strange.
I have an MSI Pro 'Z690-A motherboard (Non WIFI) which DO have the I225-V 2.5 GB LAN that is in the list.
I only use LAN for everything and haven't noticed any disconnections. 500 megabit down and up for Internet working at full speed. Internal network seems to work correctly too.

 

[FoulFoot]

I don't know that we need energy-saving enhancements on the ethernet controller, for chrissakes. Saving what, a thousandth of a watt?

 

[MASOUTH]

This whole issue is so weird. It's like there was a meeting at Intel...

"We've long been the reliability benchmark of PC NIC's to such an extreme that some customers will not even consider the competitors no matter how much they have improved. Let's see if we can fix those perceptions...."

 

[bit_user]

I don't know that we need energy-saving enhancements on the ethernet controller, for chrissakes. Saving what, a thousandth of a watt?

No, it's 1.3 - 1.5 W:

Intel® Ethernet Controller I226 Series Product Specifications

ark.intel.com

For the I225-V, it's nealy 2 W:

Intel® Ethernet Controller I225-V - Product Specifications | Intel

Intel® Ethernet Controller I225-V quick reference with specifications, features, and technologies.

www.intel.com

You might think that's no big deal, but if every chip & port in a PC had no power-saving mode, the PC's idle power would increase quite a lot. Given most PCs (especially in a corporate setting) spend most of their time near idle, there might be some big corporate customers who care about such things. Commercial electricity rates are usually a multiple of residential, and you have to pay extra to remove the heat during the summer.

My employer tracks energy usage, and has annual targets for reductions.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

I am just disappointed that this issue has persisted into the I226. I had this issue w/my I225 on my home PC, and I basically disabled all power-saving on it. How they can produce new silicon & still have the same problem, is just sad.

Now, speaking of their rep, all of my servers used to be only Intel NICs, dual or quads. They were the standard, after the departure of 3Com. I guess I can make do w/adjustments in my home PC, but I would not tolerate it in a server.

 

[bit_user]

They were the standard, after the departure of 3Com.

I remember paying a couple hundred bucks for a 3Com PCI 100 Mbps NIC, back in the late 90's.

 

[blppt]

"They were the standard, after the departure of 3Com."

Its a strange world we live in---where people say "I have a Realtek NIC" with pride.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

How has Intel NIC(s), who use to be the "Gold Standard" of Networking fall so far?

Does anybody have a history lesson on when their troubles began?

Is this worth a long term article?

How has RealTek rised in it's place?

 

[leclod]

I use Intel I219-V (previous generation) and my lan has always been breaking up.

 

[Greg7579]

How do I know if my rig has this problem or that controller? I have a 10th gen 10900K CPU and the ASUS Maximus Hero XII Motherboard. My PC is connected hardwire ethernet to the router and I have consistent 1000 Mbps speed that does occasionally drop off. But rarely.

 

[camtasia_kid]

This whole issue is so weird. It's like there was a meeting at Intel...

"We've long been the reliability benchmark of PC NIC's to such an extreme that some customers will not even consider the competitors no matter how much they have improved. Let's see if we can fix those perceptions...."

That was the exact conversation; however, just before that, they covered how to have a more diverse set of engineers. More one legged people, fewer people with coding skills. Just before that, they discussed how to appease their masters at BlackRock and Vanguard, and somehow allow the CEO to bloviate about ESG within the first few moments of the next quarterly investment call. And prior to that, the executive committee spent some time at Epstein island II. And, like ALL the other "conspiracy theories" of the past 50 years, this is all true.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

"They were the standard, after the departure of 3Com."

Its a strange world we live in---where people say "I have a Realtek NIC" with pride.

This made me laugh! I remember when businesses would complain about some networking issue, and often it was a Realtek NIC that was the problem. Bad drivers, shoddy hardware.... replace with a 3Com/Intel NIC & was back to running smoothly

Now, yikes! Realtek 2.5Gbe LOM/NICs aren't having any issues, and Intel somehow can't figure out their own. I guess they felt the cheaper integrated/consumer LAN market isn't that important to them.

 

[Misgar]

I've stopped using the 2.5Gbe Realtek RTL8125 chipset on my new Asus Prime X670-E motherboard, because the Ethernet connection kept dropping out. I updated to the latest drivers on the Realtek site but to no avail.

Instead I bought a new 10GbE Asus XG-C100C NIC and plugged it into the third PCIe slot on the mobo. Although 10Gbe NICs are expensive, I can now transfer files across my home LAN at full speed, instead of being restricted to 2.5GbE speeds. NVMe to NVMe transfers between two PCs over the LAN easily swamp 2.5GbE and even my 8TB hard disks can hammer 2.5GbE at 250MB/s transfer rates.

Intel is not the only company having trouble with 2.5GbE. The most reliable part of my LAN uses SFP+ fibre optic at 10GbE. Second hand SFP+ 10GbE NICs are much cheaper than their Ethernet counterparts.

 

[CelicaGT]

About fricking time. I'm on an old driver just to keep the random (and often persistent) drops from occurring. This should have been fixed within weeks at most. I was going to install a network card with a chipset that actually works but other things became more important and I forgot about it. With this fix out I can purchase the card out of sheer spite instead of need.

 

[bit_user]

I use Intel I219-V (previous generation) and my lan has always been breaking up.

Time and again, I'd see motherboards with Intel chipsets not using Intel's Ethernet controller that was supposedly integrated right into the chipset and wonder "why?"

Now, maybe we're beginning to see...

I remember when businesses would complain about some networking issue, and often it was a Realtek NIC that was the problem. Bad drivers, shoddy hardware....

Yeah, though I thought Realtek was mostly okay on Linux. If true, that would suggest their issues were mostly their Windows drivers.

Intel is not the only company having trouble with 2.5GbE.

Can anyone comment on Marvell/Aquantia?

 

[Misgar]

My Asus XG-C100C 10GbE Ethernet cards use the Aquantia/Marvell AQC107 chipset. I had problems when I started using them back in 2019, but a driver update in 2020 fixed the glitches. During large file transfers, they would slow down and speed up. Of course it could be switch related, but quiet low-power replacement 10GbE switches are not cheap. I don't want a noisy second-hand 19in rack mount 10GbE Cisco switch in my computer room.

My recently purchased XG-C100C is running the latest Windows driver v3.1.60 release date 22/10/2021. I haven't bothered updating the drivers on my XG-C100C cards in three older rigs, because they're stable.

There is also a new firmware update for the XG-C100C v3.1.88 but I haven't applied it to any cards. I appreciate this information won't be of much interest unless you're running a 10GbE Copper network. I haven't checked to see if Marvell do any 2.5GbE chipsets. My four XG-C100C NICs work seamlessly with my 10GbE SFP+ fibre optic switches and servers fitted with Mellanox CONNECT-X2 FSP+ NICs.

When I had problems with the Realtek RTL8125 chipset on my new X670E mobo, I dropped in an old dual-port Gigabit Intel i350-T2 server card and it was rock solid - a quality item. After the new XG-C100C arrived in the post, I substituted it for the i350-T2 card. It's a pity I had to shell out 100 bucks for a new 10GbE NIC to fix my 2.5GbE RTL8125 problems.

I have three 2.5GbE USB3 Ethernet dongles based on the Realtek 8156 chipset and they all work perfectly in a number of machines. They're certainly capable of running at speeds faster than 1.0Gb/s.

No doubt many people have fully functional 2.5GbE Intel i225 and Realtek RTL8125 chipsets on their motherboards, but I can't help wondering if cost cutting measures were employed during development and implementation. I doubt the 2.5GbE chipset on a motherboard costs more than a few dollars. Poor Windows driver design doesn't help, but more expensive plug-in cards often seem to fix the problem. Go figure?

 

[alceryes]

Strange.
I have an MSI Pro 'Z690-A motherboard (Non WIFI) which DO have the I225-V 2.5 GB LAN that is in the list.
I only use LAN for everything and haven't noticed any disconnections. 500 megabit down and up for Internet working at full speed. Internal network seems to work correctly too.

Same, I've for the B650 Aorus Master w/I225-V. Never had an issue.
I read that it was only certain chip revs. with certain firmware and driver packages. Luckily, I don't seem to be affected.

 

[Viking2121]

Huh, I wonder if thats my problem with a PC I have on the network, I kept getting disconnections or well like its just the Ethernet dropping for a few seconds and I could never figure it out, but all my other devices have been fine.

 

[2Be_or_Not2Be]

When I had problems with the Realtek RTL8125 chipset on my new X670E mobo, I dropped in an old dual-port Gigabit Intel i350-T2 server card and it was rock solid - a quality item. After the new XG-C100C arrived in the post, I substituted it for the i350-T2 card. It's a pity I had to shell out 100 bucks for a new 10GbE NIC to fix my 2.5GbE RTL8125 problems.

Yeah, I never had any issues w/Intel's server NICs. It's only the recent 2.5Gbe integrated/LOM - the I215V "Foxville" ones - on consumer boards that gave me issue. I did disable power-mgmt for it, so that helped for me. Of course, the issues only showed up w/certain other multi-gig clients, and they generally wouldn't even show up in a simple gigabit network.

 

[leclod]

It seems I did solve most of my internet interruption problem by setting the speed to Full Duplex 100Mb/s in the Intel ProSet Utility (My Router maxes out at 100Mb/s)