# Atheros/Attansic L2 gives "No Buffer Space Available"



## levinas69 (Jun 17, 2009)

Hi All,

I have just installed BSD on an ECS 945GCT-D mainboard and I am having some problems getting the nic working.

"Pciconf" reports that the board has a "Attansic (Now owned by Atheros) L2 Fast Ethernet 10/100 Base-T controller"  "kldload if_ae.ko" brings up the device swimmingly.  

ifconfig reports the device and it accepts the assignment of an IP, namely 192.168.1.99. An entry for 192.168.1.0 network appears in the routing table.

So far so good.  Now, I can ping 192.168.1.99, no problems.  But, as soon as I try to ping, say 192.168.1.1, ping just hangs for a while until a message appears that "ping: sendto: No buffer space available"  After ctrl-c, ping reports 100% packet loss.

If I then ping 192.168.1.99, no problems.  If I ping any other address on the net, then ping immediately returns: "No buffer space available."

Any suggestions?

Thanks,
j.


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## levinas69 (Sep 4, 2009)

Ok, the problem seems to be quasi-hardware based.

If I reboot the FreeBSD machine, then the router port to which it is connected hangs.  That is, the connectivity lights on the router and the ethernet card of the FreeBSD box go out.  The FreeBSD box is running an integrated atheros lan card on an ECS 945GCT-D mainboard.  The router is an old SMC Barricade.  Hard resetting the router makes the problem go away.  

I have tried specifying the media type with an ifconfig line in rc.conf with no effect.  I had hoped (incorrectly) that an autoprobe issue was causing the problem.

Before I replace my router and commit environmental hari-kiri by dumping still more electronics in the landfill, any suggestions?


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## sch (Sep 6, 2009)

Give a try to the mantra "ifconfig down; ifconfig up" 

It could make it working.


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## levinas69 (Oct 4, 2009)

Thanks for the help.  For the record, the problem was the router.  New router, no problem.


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## Ben (Nov 23, 2009)

Hi,

Sorry that I use your old post but I see you have the same Mainboard as I have and the same network device.

My network device is damn slow. I installed FreeBSD 7.2 and had to compile the driver (ae) myself. Download rate is around 300 KB/s. I installed another PCI 1GBit LAN card and get the same speed. When downloading with my MacBook I get the normal speed of around 1.2MB/s.

Any idea what that could be? Any hint?

Thanks for your help!


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