broadcom NIC SLOW!
 

I have a Dell Poweredge R410 which has dual Broadcom network adapters. The problem I'm having is that they only run at 100mb half duplex. Unfortunately, I really need these to run at full speed (1000mb) as the network throughput is dragging down several processes that need to write over the network to this machine.

What I've tried so far:
If I plug in any of my other servers into this particular switch port they will run at 1000mb full duplex. I've tried plugging this server into another switch (different brand altogether) and it still will only negotiate 100mb half duplex where other machines will negotiate 1000mb/full. I've installed Slackware 13.1 (64bit), CentOS 5 (64bit) and Slackware 13.1 (32bit). No major change in the network performance between any of these installations all using the bnx2 module. I've tried forcing the cards to 1000mb/full by editing the switch settings (forced to 1000) and by tooling with the NIC using ethtool. Neither approach allowed the cards to communicate over 100mb/half.

lscpi:
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5716 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 20)
01:00.1 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5716 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 20)

I'm open to any suggestions that might be helpful. Thanks.

Have you tried using different cat cables to see if the issue is with the cabling or plugging into different ports on the switch?

I've tried both. I've tried several different ports and using different cables. No change unfortunately. Thanks for the suggestion though - I've had bad cables cause problems like this in the past but not this time.

Try a few live cd's just to verify.

Sounds like a driver issue. Does the driver match your nic? try perusing http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethe...oaddrivers.php and test the appropriate driver for your nic.

I installed the latest kernel 2.6.37 which didn't change anything. I then compiled broadcom's modules on top of 2.6.37 and things are working well now. One switch will not talk at full speed but the other one does which was my main concern. Thanks for the suggestions.