Hyperoptic with Linux server instead of provided router?

Turbo Fredriksson · 20 Jan 2018 at 23:54

I have need for my own services and firewall instead of that crud they've included.

But I can't seem to get it working properly. Does anyone know how to setup the interface on Linux?

I'm running Debian GNU/Linux Wheezy and my interface setup is like this:

iface eth1 inet dhcp
pre-up /sbin/ethtool -K $IFACE gso off gro off tso off
pre-up /sbin/ethtool -s $IFACE speed 100 duplex full autoneg off port mii
pre-up /sbin/ethtool -A $IFACE autoneg off
up /sbin/ifconfig $IFACE txqueuelen 50000

However, after a short time (a few minutes) the interface just stops responding and I have to rerun
the middle ethtool command to get it running again.

If I enable auto negotiation (essentially running it in 1Gbps, which was my original hope/ide), the
interface keep flapping up and down.

My current working idea is that it's something wrong with the port in the other end, and I've mailed
Hyperoptic about this. But in the meantime, does anyone have any idea?

bremen1874 · 21 Jan 2018 at 01:10

It'd make much more sense to use something like pfSense or any of the other dedicated Linux/BSD firewalls.

It's also easy enough to find a decent SME router without spending stupid money.

Turbo Fredriksson · 21 Jan 2018 at 17:39

Maybe if I had to start from scratch, but this is something I developed ten, fifteen years ago and have fine-tuned over the years to be very slick and smooth. So to speak.

But that didn't answer my question, only an answer to something I didn't ask..

Caged · 21 Jan 2018 at 18:26

What happens if you leave it to autonegotiate but set the flags so that it only negotiates up to 100/full.

Turbo Fredriksson · 21 Jan 2018 at 18:33

Not sure I can do that. It's "autoneg [on|off]". I did try setting "speed 100 autoneg on", but that made it go 1Gbps right away.

Armageus · 21 Jan 2018 at 18:37

Turbo Fredriksson said:
My current working idea is that it's something wrong with the port in the other end, and I've mailed
Hyperoptic about this. But in the meantime, does anyone have any idea?

Why not just try another hardware router to rule out issues at hyperoptics end?

Turbo Fredriksson · 21 Jan 2018 at 18:39

Don't have one. Other than the one Hyperoptic provided. Which works fine of course

.

Steveocee · 22 Jan 2018 at 13:57

It sounds like whilst you are forcing link rates on your end the other end keeps trying to auto negotiate. Could potentially be a cable issue if your auto is renegotiating also. You having to keep running that middle command is probably no different to the auto neg drops.

Turbo Fredriksson · 22 Jan 2018 at 14:19

That was my thought as well. But because running the interface in auto negotiation fails MISERABLY (just flaps), my next idea was to set the speed and turn of auto negotiation.

Steveocee · 22 Jan 2018 at 18:12

Turbo Fredriksson said:
That was my thought as well. But because running the interface in auto negotiation fails MISERABLY (just flaps), my next idea was to set the speed and turn of auto negotiation.

For that to work well both ends have to force rates. Out of interest if you plug a laptop in does that work ok? Would be an easy way to diagnose bad cable.

Caged · 22 Jan 2018 at 22:26

Do you have access to a managed switch that you can manipulate the autonegotiate bits on so it doesn't even try and do 1Gb? I have no idea if you can do it in Linux but I'd suspect you can.

Turbo Fredriksson · 23 Jan 2018 at 12:57

The "ethtool -s <iface> speed <speed> autoneg off" is supposed to do exactly that - turn off autonegotiation and set the speed. The fact that it starts flapping when I turn on autonegotiation is worrying, but I'll have to deal with one thing at a time. Getting it to work longer than five minutes is number one

.

I'm going to try another cable, just to make absolutely sure. But this cable have been working fine for four or five providers over the course of several years, so it's unlikely. I'm going to triple check none the less just to be able to rule out even the most obvious things.

But I've had the opinion almost from the very beginning that it's not in my end the problem is, it's in theirs.. I just can't prove it and I of course can't check. And they're not extremely helpful

. But there's still things I could do in my end, I hope, to make sure I've tried everything..

I moved the uplink to the builtin/on-moderboard ethernet interface which is a completely different chip and driver, and I STILL get the same problems - just stops working after a few minutes. Not a peep in the logs or anything. The two LEDs on the card blinks like it's transmitting small amounts of data, so I honestly don't know WHAT could be wrong...

I've even disabled all my iptables, just to make sure they didn't do anything ... "stupid" (but they've worked for years with several other providers, so...).

Caged · 23 Jan 2018 at 19:39

You want autonegotiation on though, you just want to control what is advertised to stop it attempting to sync at 1Gb.

Either way, if the supplied router works then either it's able to work under conditions where the installed cable to your apartment is out of tolerance, or your NIC is broken.

Turbo Fredriksson · 23 Jan 2018 at 20:36

I tried a few combination like that, but always got "can't advertise speed". But after seeing your comment, I did some more tests and eventually got a command line that seemed to work:

ethtool -s eth2 autoneg on speed 100 duplex full

Using speed 1Gbps doesn't work. Still see flapping. With speed 100 it works, but I'll have to run it for a while to know for sure. But 15 minutes so far, and still going strong! Best I've ever managed is five minutes or so..

But I'm having a Hyperoptic technician over on Friday to check the quality of the cabling. With a bit of luck (!!

, it's something wrong with it. Not sure how likely that is though, the provided router don't seem to have any problem maintaining a stable link.

Caged · 23 Jan 2018 at 22:10

Take the Hyperoptic socket front off the wall and take a photo of the rear of the connector - it's probably really obvious what the issue is. But I think we've proven that the cable is bad.

Turbo Fredriksson · 23 Jan 2018 at 22:31

The wall socket was quite professionally done actually. The cable is still under investigation, we'll know on Friday if it's bad or not.

Caged · 23 Jan 2018 at 22:49

That's hideous. Looks like an electrician did it.

Let Hyperoptic sort it out.

bremen1874 · 23 Jan 2018 at 22:50

Turbo Fredriksson said:
The wall socket was quite professionally done actually

Backing box screws not fully tightened.
Cable tie missing.
Excessively long pairs.
Clear evidence of the cable kinking.

It's Cat5e so it'll probably still work, but they basically done the minimum they possibly could.

#Chri5# · 24 Jan 2018 at 07:55

If that's "quite professional", I'd hate to see a bad job!

skyripper · 24 Jan 2018 at 08:20

If your problem is autonegotiation is negotiating itself to 1GBs, stick a cheap 10/100 switch in between?