I have a Clarkconnect firewall setup with software raid 1 and all is well. I had my first box running with a VIA Samuel 2 cpu and 2 nics, one was a Dlink DFE-538TX which is basically a Realtek nic card running of the 8139too linux driver the other was a SMC1244TX which is basically a VIA Rhine running the tulip driver. I noticed that when I would do large file transfers like movie files or large ISO files it would just bog the whole network down. After further investigation I read that those network cards are crap under Linux running in a server environment. So I changed the server to a PIII 733 running 512 megs of ram instead of 256 in the other system. I also changed the network cards to Intel lan nics and what I difference. I now am able to to FTP transfer 9 to 10 megs per second under software raid 1 where I was only able to do about 3 to 5 with the other setup. My intel nics are as such eth0 has a Intel EtherExpress 100B with the S82557 chip, eth1 is on a newer S82559 chip and also has flow-control.

My question is since eth0 is connected directly to my DSL modem and my DSL modem does not support flow control which my network switch does and is conected to the 559 chip which does support flow control. It it required that all hardware support flow-control in order for it to work. As you can see my network switch supports flow-control but my modem does not. Either way the setup is much better than before espesially for large file transfers.

Here are the results for mii-tool

[root@gateway ~]# mii-tool
eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok
eth1: negotiated 100baseTx-FD flow-control, link ok
[root@gateway ~]# mii-tool -v
eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok
product info: Intel 82555 rev 0
basic mode: autonegotiation enabled
basic status: autonegotiation complete, link ok
capabilities: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD
advertising: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD
link partner: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD
eth1: negotiated 100baseTx-FD flow-control, link ok
product info: Intel 82555 rev 4
basic mode: autonegotiation enabled
basic status: autonegotiation complete, link ok
capabilities: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD
advertising: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD flow-control
link partner: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD flow-control
[root@gateway ~]#

and under ethtool

[root@gateway ~]# ethtool eth0
Settings for eth0:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: d
Wake-on: d
Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
Link detected: yes


[root@gateway ~]# ethtool eth1
Settings for eth1:
Supported ports: [ TP MII ]
Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Supports auto-negotiation: Yes
Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full
100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full
Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes
Speed: 100Mb/s
Duplex: Full
Port: MII
PHYAD: 1
Transceiver: internal
Auto-negotiation: on
Supports Wake-on: g
Wake-on: g
Current message level: 0x00000007 (7)
Link detected: yes
[root@gateway ~]#