Hi, I have a Sitecom LN-031 USB 3.0 NIC (Gigabit) and I'm trying to use it somehow, either as passthrough or not (either way is ok).
Question: is that possible?
Details from the log when plugging in the device:
2014-04-05T15:05:01.849Z cpu2:2499)<6>usb 1-1.2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
2014-04-05T15:05:01.973Z cpu3:2499)<6>usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0df6, idProduct=0072
2014-04-05T15:05:01.973Z cpu3:2499)<6>usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
2014-04-05T15:05:01.973Z cpu3:2499)<6>usb 1-1.2: Product: Sitecom USB 3.0 Gigabit
2014-04-05T15:05:01.973Z cpu3:2499)<6>usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Sitecom Europe BV
2014-04-05T15:05:01.973Z cpu3:2499)<6>usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 00000000000001
2014-04-05T15:05:01.975Z cpu3:2499)<6>usb 1-1.2: usbfs: registered usb0103
Thanks in advance for your advice
Couldn't find Sitecom LN-031 NIC in VMware Compatibility Guide, so I guess its not possible to use as passthrough but still you can give a try or use it as non passthrough.
I actually managed to physically pass through the USB 3 port and with that the attached LN-031. Inside, as a guest, a debian machine with the ax88179_178a module (had to install that from an ubuntu repo) provided me a eth0 device. That works, but with a very crappy performance, like 10 MB/s read and 40 MB/s write. I DID make sure with ethertool that I'm on 1000 and full duplex, same as the physical switch port, but that wasn't really the idea behind it. Any suggestions to get actually full Gigabit speed?
Any dropped packets on either the guest or the physical switch? This shouldn't really be the way to get NICs into your system, but I can imagine scenarios in which you have no other choice.
Could it be that you need to pass through the USB 3 controller instead of just the attached device? I've noted in the past that high bandwidth USB devices performed poorly when attached to the host and assigned to the guest. I'm not sure if that's been corrected with USB 3 or not. I have a whitebox that I pass the entire USB 3 controller through to the guest, and the performance of the hard drives attached to it when configured that way are the same as native.
Hi tomtom901, I've copied a 4GB iso file from windows to the linux guest.
while doing that, I got around 40 MB/s with no drops.
Then, I've renamed the file, sync'ed the disk, restarted smb and copied back the file, the same effect with 10 MB/s.
eth1 | Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0c:f6:ff:fe:92 |
inet addr:192.168.2.20 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 | |
inet6 addr: fe80::20c:f6ff:feff:fe92/64 Scope:Link | |
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 | |
RX packets:4744504 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 frame:0 | |
TX packets:4216994 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 | |
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 | |
RX bytes:4685877622 (4.3 GiB) TX bytes:4745248666 (4.4 GiB) |
The switch (GS724T/Netgear) says "Packets received with Errors" == 0 for all ports, same for "Transmit Packet Errors" and "Collision Frames", all ==0.
To the scenario question, of course, I prefer a proper NIC card, but my only pcie port is already allocated by the RAID controller. It's a HP Proliant Microserver Gen8 and the onboard NICs just are crap (110MB/s write which is ok, but 30MB/s read).
Hi srwsol, I DID indeed pass through both, the USB3 controller AND the USB3 device.
root@debian:/# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0e0f:0002 VMware, Inc. Virtual USB Hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0e0f:0002 VMware, Inc. Virtual USB Hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0e0f:0003 VMware, Inc. Virtual Mouse
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0df6:0072 Sitecom Europe B.V.
root@debian:/# lsusb -s 1d6b:0003 -v
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0e0f:0002 VMware, Inc. Virtual USB Hub
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 2.00
bDeviceClass 9 Hub
bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused
bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub
bMaxPacketSize0 64
idVendor 0x0e0f VMware, Inc.
idProduct 0x0002 Virtual USB Hub
bcdDevice 1.00
iManufacturer 0
iProduct 1 VMware Virtual USB Hub
iSerial 0
bNumConfigurations 1
Configuration Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 2
wTotalLength 25
bNumInterfaces 1
bConfigurationValue 1
iConfiguration 1 VMware Virtual USB Hub
bmAttributes 0xe0
Self Powered
Remote Wakeup
MaxPower 0mA
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 0
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 1
bInterfaceClass 9 Hub
bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused
bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub
iInterface 1 VMware Virtual USB Hub
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN
bmAttributes 3
Transfer Type Interrupt
Synch Type None
Usage Type Data
wMaxPacketSize 0x0001 1x 1 bytes
bInterval 4
Hub Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 41
nNbrPorts 7
wHubCharacteristic 0x0009
Per-port power switching
Per-port overcurrent protection
bPwrOn2PwrGood 50 * 2 milli seconds
bHubContrCurrent 100 milli Ampere
DeviceRemovable 0x00
PortPwrCtrlMask 0xfe
Hub Port Status:
Port 1: 0000.0503 highspeed power enable connect
Port 2: 0000.0100 power
Port 3: 0000.0100 power
Port 4: 0000.0100 power
Port 5: 0000.0100 power
Port 6: 0000.0100 power
Port 7: 0000.0100 power
Device Qualifier (for other device speed):
bLength 10
bDescriptorType 6
bcdUSB 2.00
bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level)
bDeviceSubClass 0
bDeviceProtocol 0
bMaxPacketSize0 8
bNumConfigurations 1
Device Status: 0x0001
Self Powered