This has been a known NBase-T vs MGBase-T issue since 2016 when Broadcom decided to create its own open-source networking standard instead of going with the one used by everybody else. NBase-T and MGBase-T use different signaling protocols. If the network switch chipset doesn't support the much later 802.3ad standard in its entirety including all the optional parts then you will run into a bunch of minor issues regarding low power states, duplex negotiation, and power over ethernet. There is nothing to litigate over.
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Intel 1226-V 2.5GbE Ethernet Chipset Showing Connection Drop Issues (Chipset Used on most Raptor Lake Motherboards)
My understandings we have 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T from
wiki:
IEEE 802.3bz, NBASE-T and MGBASE-T are standards for Ethernet over twisted pair at speeds of 2.5 and 5 Gbit/s. These use the same cabling as the ubiquitous Gigabit Ethernet, yet offer higher speeds. The resulting standards are named 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T
| 802.3bz-2016 |
IEEE 802.3bz, NBASE-T and MGBASE-T are standards for Ethernet over twisted pair at speeds of 2.5 and 5 Gbit/s. These use the same cabling as the ubiquitous Gigabit Ethernet, yet offer higher speeds. The resulting standards are named 2.5GBASE-T and 5GBASE-T
| Name | Standard | Status | Speed (Mbit/s) | Pairs required | Lanes per direction | Spectral Efficiency (Bits per hertz) | Line code | Symbol rate per lane (MBd) | Bandwidth (MHz) | Max distance (m) | Cable | Cable rating (MHz) | Usage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2.5GBASE-T | 802.3bz-2016 | current | 2500 | 4 | 4 | 6.25 | 200 | 100 | 100 | 100 | LAN | ||
| 5GBASE-T | 802.3bz-2016 | current | 5000 | 4 | 4 | 6.25 | 64b65b PAM-16 128-DSQ | 400 | 200 | 100 | 250 | LAN |
Not surprising, it's tough to fix a hardware bug with software - especially if you don't even know the root cause.
Randall Stephens
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It’s the other way around, Intel and the lot developed it and their hardware with the NBase-T then Broadcom and somebody else got together and developed the opensource MGBase-T then a year and change later IEEE released the 802.bz spec that was supposedly compatible with both. Sadly it is or isn’t depending on how many of the optional features the chip implements.
Full feature support is standard on the enterprise hardware that does support 2.5/5g but they are few and far between and $$$. Like my 6300M’s fully support it but they are not anything I expect to see in anybody’s home any time soon. And even there there are noticeable differences in performance and stability between 5e solid and stranded runs and for proper stability we have found Cat6 to be needed.
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Zarathustra[H]
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I'm not going to jump to any conclusions based on anecdotal reports with an n=1.
They might have messed up the fix, but that one dude may also just have bad cabling or a shitty switch or something.
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Braided cat 5 and any Broadcom chipset manufactured before 2020 is a recipe for disaster especially if the switch is still has EEE or auto negotiation enabled. Broadcom didn’t fix those signalling issues in their chips to work with most others correctly at those speeds until their 16nm refresh in 2020.
jobert
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I had started using Wi-Fi since this stupid issue appeared on my new build a couple months back. Problem now is that the Wi-Fi has started having random issues for the last few weeks. It just stops working for no damn reason and usually I have to turn it off and back on in the Windows settings for it to work again. And it is ONLY this pc that does that as every other device works perfectly fine. When it goes out the first thing I do is look at my tablet which is right beside me and its always working fine and same goes for my XBOX. So apparently Intel can't make a fucking reliable Ethernet port or a goddamn Wi-Fi card anymore.
Randall Stephens
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If this was the first patch that intel put out for these issues, I might be inclined to think the way you're saying. But this isn't patch one, or hardware revision one, we're pretty deep into the shithole that is intel 2.5gbe networking.................................
jobert
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I've heard excuses from some people for months that oh it must be your router or oh it must be a cable all of which is complete and utter horseshit.
Color me sceptical this was the root cause. People would have figured out such an easy fix a HW version and several revisions before.
revenant
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huh looks like my new board (MSI z690 carbon) has the Intel® I225V 2.5Gbps LAN controller ... I'd be fine with 1G. That's all the rest of my gear will push over copper.
EDIT: MSI rolls out new Intel workaround patch which disables EEE by default.
EDIT: MSI rolls out new Intel workaround patch which disables EEE by default.
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Zarathustra[H]
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Yeah, I guess my take is the new multigig are completely pointless.
I've already been using 10gig (currently 10GBaseSR fiber) for everything where I care about network performance for almost a decade. Everything else is running gigabit, just because performance doesn't really matter.
Multigig winds up being a middle standard without any purpose for existing. At least to me.
For everything I care about, I'd probably be using a discrete enterprise NIC anyway.
The core of the problem is clock signaling differences for auto-negotiation and error correction, but that requires a deep dive into IEEE 1588v1 and the IEEE 1588v2 specifications as well as a handful of others but that then is also dependent on what chipsets are in the switch and clock speeds there and blah blah blah, 2.5G is a mess and 5G is worse.
This has been a known problem since 2015, the MGBase-T spec was not designed for the way it ended up getting used but the market it was designed for is only now starting to materialize so the vendors dumped a bunch of hardware on the market and that's where we are now.
Back in 2014 the Ethernet Alliance held a conference on the new MGBase-T Alliance and its development of the new spec outside of the IEEE being fronted by Aquantia and how it was going to be revolutionary for the wifi AP backhaul infrastructure of tomorrow and all that hand waving. The Great Rate Debate was a hot one then.
2.5 and 5G tech was developed with the desire to use it to feed Wireless AP, it wasn't intended to be used for general desktops and was intended for a 1 to 1 solution (because you don't mix and match your vendors there).
Zarathustra[H]
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I did not know that, but now that I do, it makes a lot more sense how botched the rollout was with multiple competing standards that don't talk to eachother.
Yeah 2.5/5 is the limit you can do PoE over copper, the signalling for 10gb makes it impractical at best because of the range. 2.5/5 was the answer to that problem and is only now gaining traction as a solution and that is primarily driven by the huge uptick in video conferencing from mobile devices over the past few years. This is why we are starting to see Copper/Fiber hybrid cables become a thing for powering 10G wifi APs, but that stuff is well outside my budget, but if you are installing in stadiums or places where density is going to be insane it's the solution you need to go with now.
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Zarathustra[H]
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My strategy would be to deemphasize reliance on wifi. Make sure everything that doesn't necessarily have to be wireless is wired. Wire every single docking station on every single desk. This way Wifi capacity is reserved for when it is actually needed.
I don't run a business, but I am still on 802.11ac at home. it has given me absolutely no reason to upgrade. I might even still be on 802.11n, if my old access point hadn't crapped out on me.
As an aside, can I just say, I absolutely hate this new "Wifi 1 through 7" naming. We already had a naming convention that worked. Why mess with it?
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jobert
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Hmm AT&t is putting in up to 5 gig internet this week in my neighborhood. I didn't even know they offered speeds that fast for home use and it's not really that expensive at $180. Of course I don't think there's a single person in my neighborhood who has the hardware to support those speeds as even my fairly high-end gaming PC only supports 2.5.
Zarathustra[H]
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Usually high bandwidth internet connections are not about maxing out the bandwidth to a single client machine.
It's about having ample bandwidth such that many multiple machines can access the internet at the same time.
That said, I have to admit I am interested in beyond gig speeds, but Verizon FiOS does not offer them yet. Probably a limitation of the capability of the GPON fiber to the house.
I don't exactly treasure the idea of going crawling back to Comcast after a decade, so I probably won't, but their 5 and 10gig plans still have very limited upstream, don't they? And what about download caps?
I'm sitting here happy with Gigabit down and up, and no data caps. Their service is also impeccably reliable and has been for over a decade now.
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In theory that works but sadly with how the current secure data stores function and the way people move around the office for collaborative work it isn't feasible. The secure data stores we use hate it when you change IPs or Interfaces, it breaks the connection and reverts any open documents to view-only, which unlike read-only you can't even save to the local machine so any unsaved work is lost. I can only tell them to make sure AutoSave is enabled so often. Also, most work now doesn't happen at the desk, too many collaborative efforts where small teams get randomly formed and moved from individual offices to break-out rooms, where they still need full functionality as well as the ability to wirelessly stream to displays, cameras, audio systems, the works. In the grand scheme of things vastly improving wifi speeds and density is the cheaper solution and keeps people happier than trying to keep things wired. Docking stations are still basically mandatory though, but currently, I am phasing those out for the Dell P2327QE monitors as they have Ethernet and USB-C charging built in, and cost only slightly more than most charge-capable docking stations do on their own.
Are their 5 and 10g plans over DOCSIS or the 10g fiber that they rolled out with 2gbps plans to selected locations several years ago? That had no download caps, and was limited to 2g/2g on the router they provided (I know someone who pulled strings and got the rate limiting removed and got 10g/10g).
Zarathustra[H]
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Interesting.
That seems like a limitation of the software you guys are using, which is unfortunate.
That and I'd argue that no one needs the ability to wirelessly stream displays, cameras, audio systems, etc.
No Karen, you are not too good to plug in a USB cable
I wouldn't last a week in corporate IT. I'd be too pissed off at everyones shenanigans.
At my work we still work off of shared documents on SMB shares which don't seem to care if the IP switches.
That, and in our conference rooms we have an HDMI cable poking out of the center of the table people can plug into if they want to display on screen. We also just toss a hockey puck USB speaker on the tables in each conference room if a team needs to join a conference call.
While huge on screen shares, we also don't really have a habit of using video conferencing, seeing little value in it.
I've been working mostly remotely since March 2020, and in that time I've been in exactly one video conference, and that was mostly a a joke, because one guy on the call accidentally turned on his camera, so the rest of us turned ours on to mock him
Zarathustra[H]
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I don't know, but I'd also be interested if someone else has any information on this.
Not a limitation but a feature, even if you save the files to a USB key or any form of external media if the reading device isn't actively authenticated then the files are useless unless you check the files out then you have a 3-day grace period before they essentially self destruct.Interesting.
That seems like a limitation of the software you guys are using, which is unfortunate.
That and I'd argue that no one needs the ability to wirelessly stream displays, cameras, audio systems, etc.
No Karen, you are not too good to plug in a USB cable
I wouldn't last a week in corporate IT. I'd be too pissed off at everyones shenanigans.
At my work we still work off of shared documents on SMB shares which don't seem to care if the IP switches.
That, and in our conference rooms we have an HDMI cable poking out of the center of the table people can plug into if they want to display on screen. We also just toss a hockey puck USB speaker on the tables in each conference room if a team needs to join a conference call.
View attachment 554133
While huge on screen shares, we also don't really have a habit of using video conferencing, seeing little value in it.
I've been working mostly remotely since March 2020, and in that time I've been in exactly one video conference, and that was mostly a a joke, because one guy on the call accidentally turned on his camera, so the rest of us turned ours on to mock him
It solves the problem of somebody copying sensitive material to a USB key or external drive and losing it someplace. Does a great job on accidental overshares as well, basically categorizing all documents into categories based on how much trouble somebody would get in if they were posted publically and tailor the permissions and availability accordingly.
And let us not get started on USB, USB what 2, 3, A, B, C, 3.1 with or without voltage, oh crap your laptop only does 2A out this needs 3.2A so you are going to have to use the power adapter, and this splitter here... What? you want to use this over Bluetooth but looks like the people in here before you forgot to disconnect and now you can't connect, let me go find them so I can ask them to disconnect...
Then as to the HDMI ports sticking out, that is an OH&S problem, gotta get cable runners for that but then they get curled up so that is a new tripping hazard, so you need to adhere them to the floor but now you janitorial up your butt, so you run them under the floor to a central hatch with a floor connector, but somebody spilled a soda and it dripped down and now the port it corroded (that actually happened) and you need to replace the whole thing, wait what do you mean your Surface, Ultrabook, Macbook, Chromebook, Tablet doesn't have HDMI and you forgot your adapter dongle, yeah I can dig on up, what do you mean they left with it you know that was like $200 right...
This feels like one of those "the more you read, the worse it looks" situations.
Hm, it's not really unusual to not have the same switch vendor as the APs, or am I misunderstanding you?
How is that accomplished?
When you get to a certain point mixing and matching your networking gear is more problems than its worth, Aruba, Cisco, Arrowhive, Maraki, Ruckus, the APs are cheap, but they have all moved to controller-less setups for a reason, you need to pay for their licensing, be it the controller VM's or cloud access you name it and once you are already paying the licensing for the AP's why pay somebody else for the switches then you run 2 different platforms and you can't necessarily guarantee proper metric reporting between them. As for Aruba, we use Clearpass, which then ties into the Palo Alto stuff for proper user tracking and usage logging, with SAML authentication and dynamic VLANs with permission-based network access and all the buzzwords. When you start mixing and matching there you might be surprised at how quickly those sorts of things break down, you can do it but there isn't really a cost saving and you just create more work though. Now if you aren't using that sort of environment or you are just using DLink/TPLInk, Ubiquiti, or anything like that then go to town it doesn't matter unless you also want 2.5 or 5 GBE based AP's then you are back to needing to certify that they are properly compatible.
As for the file encryption, when you check out the file it issues a 4096-bit self-signed SSL cert to the machine, and that works as the key to the encryption, if the cert is expired or missing the file refuses to open, the cert is in the local data store of an encrypted machine.
It's not foolproof, somebody who really really wants that data will get it I am sure, but it is more than enough for the "I lost my external in the back of an Uber" scenarios that used to pop up all the time.
Delicieuxz
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What's the current prognosis on the Intel i225 / i226 adapter issues? Are they likely to be unfixable in the long term? I've seen it said a couple times that the issue went away when people replaces their network switches with another brand / model. But I've also seen people say the issue is hardware-based and won't be fixable.
jobert
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No issues here for the last month since the latest driver.
Delicieuxz
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And you had issues before the latest driver? What speed is your internet?
jobert
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Yes had plenty of issues before with it cutting on. Speed is only 50 mbps for now but will be getting 1 gig when it becomes available in the next month here.
RanceJustice
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Nice to see its an improvement for at least some people. Has anyone tested on Linux?
Delicieuxz
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Glad to hear it fixed issues for you. A lot of people don't encounter issues unless running at speeds higher than 1Gbit, though. Some people claim limiting the 2.5Gbit adapter to 1Gbit has stopped the issue. But that's not a real fix, and eventually people are going to want to use the greater advertised potential of their adapter.