Onboard Realtek NIC - No lights?

On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 10:44:00 +1000, "Ellie" <ellie.TakeThisOut@people.net.au> put
finger to keyboard and composed:

>I have my ADSL connection via a modem/router using ethernet cables. My mobo
>is an old GA-7VT600 1394 running an Athlon XP 2800+. All has been working
>fine for years, but just last week I have lost all the lights on the Realtek
>NIC and my connection to the net..... Does lights out on the onboard NIC
>mean it's dead?

Realtek (http://www.realtek.com.tw) have DOS based diagnostic
utilities (eg rset81xx) for their RTL81xx Ethernet chips. There might
even be one in your driver package.

http://europe.giga-byte.com/FileList/Driver/motherboard_driver_lan_rea...k_81xx.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 >> Stay informed about: Onboard Realtek NIC - No lights? 

Ellie wrote:
> Hi all,

> I have my ADSL connection via a modem/router using ethernet cables. My mobo
> is an old GA-7VT600 1394 running an Athlon XP 2800+. All has been working
> fine for years, but just last week I have lost all the lights on the Realtek
> NIC and my connection to the net..... Does lights out on the onboard NIC
> mean it's dead? I haven't flashed the bios or done anything silly to the
> system. Win XP just says that the cable in 'unplugged'. I have tried 3
> other cables and nothing - still no lights. The LAN is enabled in the bios
> OK as it has been working for literally years...... Does this mean I will
> have to put in a PCI NIC card?

> Thank you.


Yeah, I'm afraid so, the NICs give out eventually after several years. I
had an onboard NIC in my ECS K7S5A board (which I'm still using now),
and it gave out about 4 years ago. Been using a PCI NIC ever since then.
They're pretty cheap, about $20.

Yousuf Khan

--
There is no failure, only delayed success
 >> Stay informed about: Onboard Realtek NIC - No lights? 

Yousuf Khan wrote:
> Ellie wrote:
>> Hi all,
>
>> I have my ADSL connection via a modem/router using ethernet cables.
>> My mobo
>> is an old GA-7VT600 1394 running an Athlon XP 2800+. All has been
>> working
>> fine for years, but just last week I have lost all the lights on the
>> Realtek
>> NIC and my connection to the net..... Does lights out on the onboard NIC
>> mean it's dead? I haven't flashed the bios or done anything silly to the
>> system. Win XP just says that the cable in 'unplugged'. I have tried 3
>> other cables and nothing - still no lights. The LAN is enabled in the
>> bios
>> OK as it has been working for literally years...... Does this mean I
>> will
>> have to put in a PCI NIC card?
>
>> Thank you.
>
>
> Yeah, I'm afraid so, the NICs give out eventually after several years. I
> had an onboard NIC in my ECS K7S5A board (which I'm still using now),
> and it gave out about 4 years ago. Been using a PCI NIC ever since then.
> They're pretty cheap, about $20.
>
> Yousuf Khan
>
I'm new here but I do have a suggestion. Buy a NIC card with its' own
processor on board and it will offload a lot of work from the CPU. I am
running a 3Com 3CR990 on a cable modem setup that runs up to 13Mbps
until they throttle me back to 7.5Mbps and the processor load remains
low. With a cheap card like the 3C905 the CPU has to do a lot more work.
The on board stuff tends to be the cheapest that the MB manufacturer can
find and is not usually that great. My MB is an ASUS K8N and both the
network port and the on board audio are jokes, even though ASUS is one
of the better MB companies.
E-bay might be the best way to find a NIC card as long as you get the
setup CD or can download it.
Best of luck.
Bill Baka
 >> Stay informed about: Onboard Realtek NIC - No lights? 

On Tue, 10 Apr 2007 11:27:54 -0700, Bill <bbaka.RemoveThis@comcast.net> put
finger to keyboard and composed:

>Franc Zabkar wrote:
>> On Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:00:40 GMT, Bill <bbaka.RemoveThis@comcast.net> put finger
>> to keyboard and composed:

>>> I'm new here but I do have a suggestion. Buy a NIC card with its' own
>>> processor on board and it will offload a lot of work from the CPU. I am
>>> running a 3Com 3CR990 ...

<snip>

>> I don't know much about networking, but it seems to me that the extra
>> processing capability of 3Com's 3CR990 NIC is tied up with security
>> related tasks.

<snip>

>3Com seems to have mostly dropped the NIC card business unless
>you want to get into the hundreds of dollars. Now that the MB vendors
>have put ethernet on the boards people seem to forget that a separate
>and dedicated NIC co-processor really did help.

Your original statement that typical NICs have no onboard CPU had me
wondering whether my Realtek cheapie was some kind of "win-NIC". Now
you appear to be saying that NICs *do* in fact have their own CPU, but
that the more expensive ones have an additional co-processor to
support non-standard features such as hardware based security. If
that's the case, then it seems to me that you are bagging a Volkswagen
for not being a Porsche.

>My comment on cheap junk on the MBs holds.

AFAICT, a typical NIC that sells for about $10-15 has the exact same
hardware as what is on a motherboard (other than a boot ROM socket).

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 >> Stay informed about: Onboard Realtek NIC - No lights? 

On Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:00:40 GMT, Bill <bbaka RemoveThis @comcast.net> put finger
to keyboard and composed:


>I'm new here but I do have a suggestion. Buy a NIC card with its' own
>processor on board and it will offload a lot of work from the CPU. I am
>running a 3Com 3CR990 on a cable modem setup that runs up to 13Mbps
>until they throttle me back to 7.5Mbps and the processor load remains
>low. With a cheap card like the 3C905 the CPU has to do a lot more work.
>The on board stuff tends to be the cheapest that the MB manufacturer can
>find and is not usually that great. My MB is an ASUS K8N and both the
>network port and the on board audio are jokes, even though ASUS is one
>of the better MB companies.
>E-bay might be the best way to find a NIC card as long as you get the
>setup CD or can download it.
>Best of luck.
>Bill Baka

I don't know much about networking, but it seems to me that the extra
processing capability of 3Com's 3CR990 NIC is tied up with security
related tasks. Just how important are the following "offloads" for the
typical home user?

http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=prodspec&sku=3CR990-TX-97

Security offloads: 168-bit 3DES, 56-bit DES, SHA-1, MD5, RFC 2402
Additional offloads: TCP segmentation, TCP large send, TCP/IP checksum

I notice from your headers that you are using "Windows/20070221". Is
this Vista? Are you using the above security features on your machine?
If so, did Vista come with built-in support for your card? I notice
that 3Com's web site only provides W2K and XP support for the
discontinued 3CR990.

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 >> Stay informed about: Onboard Realtek NIC - No lights? 

Franc Zabkar wrote:
> On Sat, 07 Apr 2007 23:00:40 GMT, Bill <bbaka.TakeThisOut@comcast.net> put finger
> to keyboard and composed:
>
>
>> I'm new here but I do have a suggestion. Buy a NIC card with its' own
>> processor on board and it will offload a lot of work from the CPU. I am
>> running a 3Com 3CR990 on a cable modem setup that runs up to 13Mbps
>> until they throttle me back to 7.5Mbps and the processor load remains
>> low. With a cheap card like the 3C905 the CPU has to do a lot more work.
>> The on board stuff tends to be the cheapest that the MB manufacturer can
>> find and is not usually that great. My MB is an ASUS K8N and both the
>> network port and the on board audio are jokes, even though ASUS is one
>> of the better MB companies.
>> E-bay might be the best way to find a NIC card as long as you get the
>> setup CD or can download it.
>> Best of luck.
>> Bill Baka
>
> I don't know much about networking, but it seems to me that the extra
> processing capability of 3Com's 3CR990 NIC is tied up with security
> related tasks. Just how important are the following "offloads" for the
> typical home user?

Probably not terribly important but it does mean less work for any
security software you might have. I suppose I am overdoing it by also
going through a Cisco/Linksys WRT54G router and it's internal
fire-walling, but it does work with both XP and all the flavors of Linux
I have tried.
>
> http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/detail.jsp?tab=prodspec&sku=3CR990-TX-97
>
> Security offloads: 168-bit 3DES, 56-bit DES, SHA-1, MD5, RFC 2402
> Additional offloads: TCP segmentation, TCP large send, TCP/IP checksum
>
> I notice from your headers that you are using "Windows/20070221". Is
> this Vista?

XP. Every comment I have seen posted says that Vista flat out sucks.
Until I am forced to commit a hard drive to it, there will be no Vista here.

Are you using the above security features on your machine?
> If so, did Vista come with built-in support for your card? I notice
> that 3Com's web site only provides W2K and XP support for the
> discontinued 3CR990.

I did the setup under XP SP2+(a bunch of MS patches) and it works under
Linux. 3Com seems to have mostly dropped the NIC card business unless
you want to get into the hundreds of dollars. Now that the MB vendors
have put ethernet on the boards people seem to forget that a separate
and dedicated NIC co-processor really did help. My comment on cheap junk
on the MBs holds. My audio is Realtek and it is junk, hence a sound blaster.
That's all I can add.
Bill Baka
>
> - Franc Zabkar
 >> Stay informed about: Onboard Realtek NIC - No lights? 

On Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:32:04 GMT, Bill <bbaka RemoveThis @comcast.net> put finger
to keyboard and composed:

>Franc Zabkar wrote:

>> Well, for $30 I can buy a DVD player with a PSU, case, VFD, DVD
>> loader, RAM, flash EEPROM, remote control, etc, etc. Within that
>> package is an MPEG4 capable decoder chip which probably has ten times
>> the processing power of a $10 NIC. So no, I wouldn't be surprised to
>> find that I could buy a Gigabit NIC for around $10.
>
>I have an older 3C905 and it just appears to have a fancy ASIC on it.
>Whether part of that is a processor is debatable. That card seems to
>show up more often than not.

I found this photo:
http://www.nicmania.net/nic/img/3c905-tx/3c905-tx_c.jpg

The card appears to have 3 main chips.

magnetics transceiver Phys layer MAC layer Host

Bel <--> DP83223 <--> DP83840 <- MII -> Parallel <--> PCI bus
| Tasking
| ASIC
Media Independent Interface -| |
|
Network Interface Controller (?) -|

AIUI, cheap $10 NICs incorporate all three functions in a single chip,
eg a Realtek RTL8139, so they would be no worse than the 3C905 (the
latter dates back to late 1997 or early 1998).

As for current motherboards, they appear to incorporate the MAC layer
into the southbridge while the other two functions are integrated into
a single PHY/transceiver chip, eg IC Plus IP101. The connection
between the two is via an MII.

AFAICT this is a typical setup:
http://www.sis.com/UD_Data/products/desktop_pc/athlonxp/746/sis746_diagram.jpg

BTW National Semiconductor's DP8390x MAC chips are referred to as
Network Interface Controllers, so they are not strictly CPUs, as you
have said.

>>> but
>>>> that the more expensive ones have an additional co-processor to
>>>> support non-standard features such as hardware based security. If
>>>> that's the case, then it seems to me that you are bagging a Volkswagen
>>>> for not being a Porsche.
>>>>
>>>>> My comment on cheap junk on the MBs holds.
>>>> AFAICT, a typical NIC that sells for about $10-15 has the exact same
>>>> hardware as what is on a motherboard (other than a boot ROM socket).
>
>If it is $10-15 on a 10/100 NIC then it is probably less than $5 on
>parts on a motherboard. How cheap they can go, I do not know.

I think these days it may be as simple as this:

mag <--> PHY/transceiver chip <-- MII --> southbridge (MAC layer)

Of course that is not to say that any functionality is missing. In
fact it could be that your motherboard's LAN hardware is superior to
your 3Com 3CR990. Unfortunately I can't find a good photo of the NIC,
so I am unable to research its chips. It seems to me, however, that
you are being somewhat unfair in your criticism of standard NICs.
After all, unlike winmodems which have had either their DSP or
controller chips replaced by software, a standard NIC retains a full
complement of hardware and is therefore able to completely satisfy the
requirements of the relevant 802.3 standard.

FWIW, your K8N motherboard comes with the following drivers:

WinXP ethernet NRM driver version 4.42
Win2K/XP ethernet Network Access Manager driver firewall version 4.48
Network management tools version 4.16

On a final note, about the only significant difference I can see
between a very old Novell ISA NIC and a modern Realtek RTL8139 chip is
that the former has two 8Kx8 SRAM chips whereas the latter "contains
two large (2Kbyte) independent receive and transmit FIFOs".

- Franc Zabkar
--
Please remove one 'i' from my address when replying by email.
 >> Stay informed about: Onboard Realtek NIC - No lights?