Question Dual 2.5GbE-T (RealTek 8125 chipset) PCI-E x1 cards making the rounds on ebay.

[VirtualLarry]

Dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI-e x1 Network Card NIC RealTek RTL8125 Chipset for sale online

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI-e x1 Network Card NIC RealTek RTL8125 Chipset at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI-e x1 Network Card NIC RealTek RTL8125 Chipset for sale online

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Dual 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet PCI-e x1 Network Card NIC RealTek RTL8125 Chipset at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Was looking at maybe getting some 2.5GbE-T PCI-E cards, they have single-port ones for $29.99 or so (with qty discount), and now, they've got dual-port ones for $39.99! Seeing as how I need to equip several PCs, and have a nice 8-port managed switch, I might be able to utilize the dual-port cards, if they support LACP or LAG in their driver, or maybe just SMB-MC (if I can get it working with my NAS units). Should be interesting.

Those links are just examples, and the only two that I found off-hand. One of them is a SYBA (branded) one, supposedly. Maybe Newegg will carry that one, eventually.

Network Interface Cards, NIC

www.sybausa.com

Edit: Wow, that Syba page claims that it supports XP! (and of course, everything newer)

 

[mxnerd]

Don't know if Syba products quality gets any better these days, I have nothing but negative opinions about them.

Syba:
2.5 Gigabit network card Compatible with a broad range of operating systems, including Windows 10, 8/8.1, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, XP-64bit, Vista, Vista-64bit, 7, 7-64bit,

I wouldn't believe it a bit about it will support anything older than Windows 8

 

[mxnerd]

Syba:
2.5 Gigabit network card Compatible with a broad range of operating systems, including Windows 10, 8/8.1, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, XP-64bit, Vista, Vista-64bit, 7, 7-64bit,

I wouldn't believe it a bit about it will support anything older than Windows 8

Well, it might. Realtek does seem to provide drivers for old OS

Realtek PCIe FE / GBE / 2.5G / Gaming Ethernet Family Controller Software - REALTEK

www.realtek.com

 

[VirtualLarry]

Claims to support VLANs too.

Would something like this be helpful, to set up a separate (either, physical, or VLAN-based) storage-based LAN to stick the NAS units on?

Seeing as I already have the 8-port 2.5GbE-T managed switches (two of them), would this dual 2.5 gigabit card be a better, or worse choice, than an Aquantia PCI-E x1 5GbE-T card?

 

[mxnerd]

Well, I downloaded the XP/2003 auto installation file, unzip it and did not find RTL8125 info in its installation ini files.

Realtek just aggregates Fast Ethernet (100Mbps), Gigabit & 2.5Gbe network cards support drivers on the same web page. So no, 2.5Gbe card is not supported on old OS.

==

Personally, I suck at VLAN things.

But basically I believe all network cards no matter what brands all support VLANs nowadays.

I do know VLAN block broadcasting between different VLANs even if your machines/devices attaches to same switch. Basically it just create several virtual switches within the same switch.

 

[SamirD]

This is interesting as it would be neat to see what 98se would do with 2.5Gb, lol.

Great to see card prices coming down. Now if some legit companies and not just CCC would be available, there could be the start of a migration from 1G.

 

[mxnerd]

By the way, the Syba dual 2.5Gbps ports PCIe (if v1.0. Syba does not specify on its website) x1 card probably can't take advantage of PCIe x1 bandwidth which is only 2.5Gbps and dual ports will need 5Gbps in one direction.

All quad ports gigabit NICs (4 Gbps total) from INTEL / HP have PCIE x4 interface yet Syba dual port 2.5Gbps x 2 (5 Gbps total) has a PCIe x1 interface?

That's suspecious.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Pretty sure that the RTL8125 chipset is PCI-E 2.0 or 3.0. From the pictures of the card, it looks like there's a small bridge chip to the right. It would be interesting to find the model of that bridge chip, and look up the specs.

From my knowledge, a PCI-E 3.0 x1 slot, has at least 5Gbit/sec of bandwidth. At least, the AQ-108 cards, are PCI-E 3.0 x1, and 5GbE-T.

 

[mxnerd]

OK. RTL8125 seems to be PCIe 2.0 host. So its x1 interface is 5Gbps.

So hopefully it's not cheating buyers.

 

[SamirD]

By the way, the Syba dual 2.5Gbps ports PCIe (if v1.0. Syba does not specify on its website) x1 card probably can't take advantage of PCIe x1 bandwidth which is only 2.5Gbps and dual ports will need 5Gbps in one direction.

All quad ports gigabit NICs (4 Gbps total) from INTEL / HP have PCIE x4 interface yet Syba dual port 2.5Gbps x 2 (5 Gbps total) has a PCIe x1 interface?

That's suspecious.

I've seen this done for compatibility before. My HP nc7170 pci-x cards don't have enough bandwidth for both 1G port when using just 32-bit pci, but they still allow the operation. I'm sure there's some sort of management of the bandwidth on my hp cards since they're made by Intel, but who knows if there's anything on the syba.

 

[abufrejoval]

OK. RTL8125 seems to be PCIe 2.0 host. So its x1 interface is 5Gbps.

So hopefully it's not cheating buyers.

I cannot think of any real-life workload that will do 250MB/s in both directions, so it's better to count that at 2.5Gbit/s 'every direction'.

That's also why LACP/LAG won't make a lot of sense on a PCIe 2 x1 connector. Actually PCIe 2.0 is the crux with all those NBase-T chip designs: They are simply wasting far too many lanes, especially with those new Ryzens.

USB based Ethernet may be the better option up to 10Gbit, because it effectively gives you a switching layer for distributing bandwidth just where and when you need it instead of forcing you to a flat lane allocation.

Of course there is overhead, it's dangling out all over the place, adds failure points etc., but until they come up with something more sensible...

Not that I have seen any affordable USB3.2 10Gbase-T adapters actually being sold...

 

[SamirD]

An all NVME flash array can nearly saturate 10Gb so a high speed NAS could saturate it.

And wouldn't the PCI bus still only interrupt and use the lanes when needed vs having them allocated to the nic all the time?

 

[DickyDck]

Hello all! I bought one of these! but for whatever reason it is nerfed to 111MB/s , but for what it is worth it is pegged at that speed. This makes me think there is a configuration item somewhere, or a switch in the settings that needs to be clicked. I installed it in my workstation, i7-6850 32GB Ram, it is a strong box. On the other end is a Netgear GC752x Smart switch, connected to a 10Gb/s SFP+ slot. If/When I figure this out I'll reply back here with whatever I find was the magic switch

 

[DickyDck]

will also add, my QNAP NAS is connected to the same switch via 10G DAC Cable

 

[abufrejoval]

Hello all! I bought one of these! but for whatever reason it is nerfed to 111MB/s , but for what it is worth it is pegged at that speed. This makes me think there is a configuration item somewhere, or a switch in the settings that needs to be clicked. I installed it in my workstation, i7-6850 32GB Ram, it is a strong box. On the other end is a Netgear GC752x Smart switch, connected to a 10Gb/s SFP+ slot. If/When I figure this out I'll reply back here with whatever I find was the magic switch

For 2.5 or 5Gbit you need NBase-T: A normal 1/10Gbit port won't do and if you connect to an SFP+ port, you'll need a GBIC to match. I have heard of SFP+ GBICs that will run the intermediate line speeds of 2.5 and 5Gbit, but chances are, yours isn't one of those either.

 

[abufrejoval]

In other words: The Netgear GC752x is a pure 100/1000/10000 Mbit device that won't support 2500 or 5000 Mbit speeds.

 

[DickyDck]

you are correct! I could have swore I saw it was NBase-T compatible, oh well, at least this card was dirt cheap!

 

[VirtualLarry]

I was just reading that the 'ipolex' 10G SFP+ Copper adapters, have secret, undocumented support, for 2.5/5GbE, in addition to 10GbE-T and 1GbE-T. At least, when paired up with a Mikrotik SFP+ using switch. According to a ServeTheHome article, at least. Lucky me, I own some of those, and a Mikrotik 4-port 10GbE SFP+ plus 1-port GbE-T switch. And my three main workstations are or will be using those RealTek 2.5GbE cards.

I also have a pair of physically-larger D-Link 8-port 2.5GbE-T plus 2-port 10GbE SFP+ switches, of which one is currently deployed.

Unfortunately, NHOS doesn't support the RealTek 2.5GbE-T NICs yet, so I have to run a secondary 1GbE-T connection to use NHOS.

Either I have to physically swap the cable back and forth on the back of the PC, or I'll have to run two cables, to two different switches, a 5 or 8-port 1GbE-T unmanaged switch, probably uplinked to the Mikrotik 4x 10G SFP+ + 1x GbE switch, and then three GBIC/SFP+ 'ipolex' adapters, to the three workstations to their faster-than-1GbE-T ports (currently RealTek 2.5GbE PCI-E x1 cards, might swap to 10GbE-T cards in the future, if price ever drops to $50 or less on them).

However, I'll either have to play with ethernet NIC metrics in Windows 10, or disable the 1GbE-T connection, to force usage of the 2.5GbE.

I don't know what the switch arrangement would effectively do, with two cables, one into a unmanaged 8-port GbE-T switch, and another into the Mikrotik, and then both effectively trunked (but not literally, no VLANs at this time), back to my main NAS and networking cluster, over a 10GbE-T link, through a pair of the 'ipolex' converters.

Edit: Update, see this thread:

Question - My Network as of 01/10/2020 - workstations @ 2.5GbE-T, trunked @ 10GbE-T to networking cluster, NAS @ 2.5GbE-T, soon to have unRAID server @ 10GbE-T.

Just a little update, the prior thread about my "big network makeover" kind of meandered. Anyways, here's what I've got: Three Ryzen CPU workstations, each with different motherboards, 2x B450, 1x X370, which may get "upgraded" to a B450, haven't decided yet. My main workstation, burned out...

forums.anandtech.com

 

[SamirD]

One way you can manually use the additional bandwidth of multiple nics is to simply have them on separate networks.

For example, I have a server that has a quad nic in it. Network 1 is 192.168.1.x, network 2 is 192.168.2.x, network 3, etc.

And on the other end, anything else with multiple nics does the same thing, for example like a nas, network 1 192.168.1.x and network2 is 192.168.2.x.

Now that you have this set up, when you tell your system to connect to the share at \\192.168.1.x\share, it will use the nic on network 1, whereas if you tell your system to connect to the same share via \\192.168.2.x\share, it will use the second nic, etc.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Rosewill RC-20001 2.5GBASE-T PCIe Network Adapter 2.5Gbps PCI-Express x1 1 x RJ45 $15.99 AP ($4) @ Newegg

Rosewill RC-20001 2.5GBASE-T PCIe Network Adapter 2.5Gbps PCI-Express x1 1 x RJ45 $19.99 + $4 off w/ promo code 3BDMDSL236, limited offer --- Now $18.99 Edit: 2021-01-01 now up to $24.99 (DEAD). https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rc-20001/p/N82E16833166146?Item=N82E16833166146 --- Rosewill...

forums.anandtech.com

Update, Rosewill @ Newegg introduces their RealTek 8125-based PCI-E x1 2.5GbE-T cards @ $29.99.

At least now we have a non-China-direct source that's minimally-branded for these cards.