Topic: 50% packet loss with ping

[Jesper Holck]

I have installed the e-smith server on an old Pentium 133 MHz machine (HP Vectra). The machine is equipped with an old 3com 3c509b net card, which I've managed to make functional by adding the line "alias eth0 3c509" to /etc/modules.conf .

The 3c509 is connected to an SMC EZ switch, wich should be able to handle both 10 and 100 Mbps connections. It is all working, but the connection to the server seems very slow. When I ping from the server to any other machine, even my local router, I experience package losses of around 50%.

I've tried to configure the 3c509 card as both duplex and simplex, but it seems to make no difference. ifconfig shows the card up and running and no lost packages.

Any suggestions?

I know it's an old card, and searches on support forums show many people having problems with this. So I've also tried to exchange the old card with a new 100Mbps PCI card, but haven't been able to make that functional at all. The problem seems to be - as far as I can see from other people's experience - that for PCI cards to work with Linux, you have to be able to disable Plug and Play in the machine BIOS - and this can't be donw on my Vectra. Is this so?

Jesper, Denmark

[Dave]

> The machine is equipped with an old 3com 3c509b net card, which
> I've managed to make functional by adding the line "alias eth0 3c509" to
> /etc/modules.conf .

If that is all you have done I'd  be suspicous that it's not installed 100% properly. That card is an ISA card an you need to tell the driver the IRQ and adress to use. The SME config database also stores the driver details. Getting the database out of sync with reality is not a Good Thing (tm).

Search back through these forums on 3c509 and you'll find plenty of help.

Cheers
Dave.

[Boris]

I have had issues with those cards not wirking properly (slooow) with inexpencive network switches (D-Link). If you could borrow another switch or hub for testing from anywhere you may see difference.

[Andrei]

One sure NIC that i know will work with all linux OS's are ReaTek. They are the generic cards you buy at CompUSA. They work great in evry Linux OS I have ever run and they come with Linux drivers.Boris wrote:
>
> I have had issues with those cards not wirking properly
> (slooow) with inexpencive network switches (D-Link). If you
> could borrow another switch or hub for testing from anywhere
> you may see difference.

[Jesper Holck]

Thank you for your replies, which helped me get things working. I swapped the SMC card in the server with a Realtek card from my PC, and that helped. Windows was able to get the SMC card working, and e-smith happily identified and used the Realtek card.

Also I changed my configuration to "server and gateway" and was able to get the old 3com 509 card to speak happily with my router. It works fine, even though I haven't supplied any options regarding io or irq.

Moral of story:
Don't spend too much time fiddling with drivers - try another NIC.

Jesper

[Dave]

> Moral of story:
> Don't spend too much time fiddling with drivers - try another NIC.

Doubly so if the doubtful NIC is a 3COM one...