Tweaking the Mad Hatter's NICs with ethtool.

[SharedMedia]

Breaking the MegaBit Barrier..
"no speeding tickets were given while creating this posting.."

Increasing RedHats’ Pulse, “CAUTION – Increased stimulation to Windows may cause Blue Screening..”
“Author has NOT tested prescription on FC3, please use with CARE!”

Optimizing your system’s NIC performance is always a priority in the Linux Community. A tool to do such a thing called ethtool. A robust prescription for the lazy NIC. ethtool is a Linux net driver diagnostic and tuning tool for the Linux 2.4.x (or later) series of kernels. Obtain information and diagnostics related to media, link status, driver version, PCI (or other) bus location, and more.

There are MANY ways to increase and optimize your system, one is to review the NIC's module and Kernel Re-Building specific to your brand. others are to use GUI Administrations or other command line tools. This is one of MANY tools available. PLEASE NOTE, I have NOT tested this tool with recent Kernel or FC3, however; providing you with a resource to start... Enjoy!

MANPAGE
ethtool - Display or change ethernet card settings

SYNOPSIS
ethtool ethX
ethtool -i ethX
ethtool -h

ethtool -s ethX [ speed { 10,100,1000 } ] [ duplex { half,full } ] [ port { tp,aui,mii,fibre } ] [ autoneg { on,off } ] [ phyad N ] [ xcvr { internal,external } ] [ wol [ pumbagsd ]+ ] [ sopass X:X:X:X:X:X ]

DESCRIPTION
ethtool is used for querying settings of an ethernet device and changing them.
ethX is the name of the ethernet device to work on.

OPTIONS
ethtool with a single argument specifying the device name prints current setting of the specified device.
-i queries the specified ethernet device for associated driver information.
-h shows a short help message.
-s option allows changing some or all settings of the specified ethernet device. All following options only apply if -s was specified.
speed Set speed in Mb/s. ethtool with single argument will show you the supported device speeds.
duplex Set full or half duplex mode.
port Select device port.
autoneg Specify if autonegotiation is enabled. In the usual case it is, but might cause some problems with some network devices, so you can turn it off.
phyad Physical address. Not used yet.
xcvr Select transceiver type. Currently only internal and external can be specified, in the future further types might be added.
wol Set Wake-on-LAN options. Not all devices support this. The argument to this option is a string of characters specifying which options to enable.
p Wake on phy activity
u Wake on unicast messages
m Wake on multicast messages
b Wake on broadcast messages
a Wake on ARP
g Wake on MagicPacket(tm)
s Enable SecureOn(tm) password for MagicPacket(tm)
d Disable (wake on nothing). This option clears all previous options.
sopass Set the SecureOn(tm) password. The argument to this option must be 6 bytes in ethernet MAC hex format (xx:yy:zz:aa:bb:cc).

ethtool Version 2 August 16, 2004
SourceForge LINK to GKERNEL Project

RedHat Advisory :
An updated ethtool package that fixes a bug by adding a symbolic link is
now available.

The ethtool utility allows querying and changing of ethernet card settings,
such as speed, port, auto-negotiation, and PCI locations.

Between the releases of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 Update 2 and Update 3,
the location of ethtool was changed from /usr/sbin to /sbin. Many older
scripts depend on its location in /usr/sbin. This update creates a
symbolic link from /sbin/ethtool to /usr/sbin/ethtool upon installation.

All users of ethtool should upgrade to this updated package, which resolves
this issue.

For WINDOWS Clients
"WARNING - Bill Gates designed windows with his eyes CLOSED therefore; may not like your change, BACKUP your system.ini file!"
Again, PLEASE Use this as a reference and Tweaking may not always work...

1. Click "Start", "Run", then type in sysedit. Close all windows except for the system.ini window.
2. Scroll down until you find the [386Enh] section.
3. At the end of this section add the line Irq11=4096 but substitute the Irq of your NIC where mine says 11. Yours might be something like Irq13=4096 or Irq9=4096.

This will allocate 4 megs of memory for your NIC and will give you on average a 20% increase in speed over your lan, cable connection, or whatever is plugged into your NIC.

Here's what my entry looked like after I finished.

[386Enh]
ebios=*ebios
woafont=dosapp.fon
mouse=*vmouse, msmouse.vxd
device=*dynapage
device=*vcd
device=*vpd
device=*int13
device=*enable
keyboard=*vkd
display=*vdd,*vflatd
EMMExclude=C000-CFFF
Irq10=4096

When done just close and when prompted that the system.ini file has changed... do you want to save the changes? Hit yes.