# USB Ethernet adapter (AX88179) Issue



## KEOU CHAO (Aug 14, 2017)

Hi,

I am having problem with USB Ethernet adapter (AX88179) running FreeBSD 11.1, all the ethernet functions work, but it has much lower throughput compare the same PC running Debian 9. I tested it by running iperf3 between two PCs, the results show high Retr count.

The AX88179 is listed under supported device list using axge driver; is there any special setup needed for the USB Ethernet adapter (AX88179) ?

Thanks,

Detail information -

Hardware - Dell E6330 laptop

CPU : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3320M CPU @ 2.60GHz
Memory : 8 GB
USB Ethernet: 
ugen0.4: <ASIX Elec. Corp. AX88179> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=SUPER (5.0Gbps) pwr=ON (124mA)​
Software - 
11.1-RELEASE
kernal module:
Id Refs Address            Size     Name
 1   14 0xffffffff80200000 1c91000  kernel
 2    1 0xffffffff82221000 4298     if_axge.ko
 3    1 0xffffffff82226000 2c60     uether.ko
 4    1 0xffffffff82229000 3650     ums.ko​
The throughput as iperf3 client

[ ID] Interval            Transfer      Bitrate             Retr
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 283 MBytes 237 Mbits/sec 2282 sender
[ 5] 0.00-10.00 sec 283 MBytes 237 Mbits/sec receiver

The throughput as iperf3 server

[ ID] Interval            Transfer      Bandwidth       Retr
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 265 MBytes 222 Mbits/sec 4069 sender
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 264 MBytes 222 Mbits/sec receiver

*For Comparison, I setup the laptop dual boot with Debian 9, the results*

The throughput as iperf3 client
[ ID] Interval            Transfer       Bandwidth      Retr
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.10 GBytes 944 Mbits/sec 5 sender
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.10 GBytes 941 Mbits/sec receiver

The throughput as iperf3 server
[ ID] Interval            Transfer       Bandwidth      Retr
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.07 GBytes 921 Mbits/sec 0 sender
[ 4] 0.00-10.00 sec 1.07 GBytes 921 Mbits/sec receiver


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## dsagra (Jan 10, 2018)

Hello,
I'm experiencing the same throughput problem with this NIC/driver: while I'm able to get Gigabit speed with Linux on the same machine, with FreeBSD 11.1, I only get ~240Mb/s: I'm aware that USB3 NICs are not the best, but could anyone explain such a huge difference in performance or was able to fix this?

Thank you.


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## wiggwire (Aug 1, 2018)

Hi, was resolution ever found on this, I have the same limit throughput, while all ethernet functions are operating as expected


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## dsagra (Aug 2, 2018)

Hello wiggwire,
sadly, this seems to be a limitation for current if_axge driver included in FreeBSD kernel 

I opened this [1] bug report a while ago, but not much activity on it, so far... There has been some activity on the head code repository [2], as well, with some slight speed improvement, but driver is still unable to hit ~Gigabit speeds 

[1] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=225179
[2] https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/dev/usb/net/if_axge.c?view=log


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