Realtek RTL8125 Not allowing 2.5g in windows VM

anuccite

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Oct 24, 2021
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I have managed to setup my dual port 8125 adapter and it's showing 2.5g in ethtool

But I can't see how to use that adapter inside a windows VM.

I have the following options under Network Devices
Intel E1000
VirtIO (paravirtualized)
Realtek RTL8139
VMWare vmxnet3

Is what I'm looking to do even possible?
 

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I imagine you've already had the Windows VM working? If so it should still work - using the bridge vmbr1 (as in image) with which ever Model driver works/worked for you. This vmbr1 bridge should be bridging the enp7s0 (new NIC, as in image) in your case. I believe you should then still get the 2.5 GB bandwidth on the bridge. If you want, you can limit this vmbr1 bridge to this VM, by not assigning it anywhere else, and so leaving the full bandwidth available to the VM exclusively.

If however your intent was to "dedicate" on a HW level, this new NIC to the Windows VM, you'll need to resort to the "passthrough" technic, described in many places, both in this forum & many others.
 
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I imagine you've already had the Windows VM working? If so it should still work - using the bridge vmbr1 (as in image) with which ever Model driver works/worked for you. This vmbr1 bridge should be bridging the enp7s0 (new NIC, as in image) in your case. I believe you should then still get the 2.5 GB bandwidth on the bridge. If you want, you can limit this vmbr1 bridge to this VM, by not assigning it anywhere else, and so leaving the full bandwidth available to the VM exclusively.

If however your intent was to "dedicate" on a HW level, this new NIC to the Windows VM, you'll need to resort to the "passthrough" technic, described in many places, both in this forum & many others.
I am using vmbr with enp7s0 as seen below, but in the VM i am limited to 1g networking I did try to install the realtek drivers on the windows side, but it simply says it can't find a device with that hardware EDIT: Not trying to passthrough the device
 

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Interesting.....
Is this with the E1000 driver?
Have you tried the VirtIO type/drivers. (You'll need to install drivers within Windows)

BTW I notice that vmbr1 is also your main PVE IP (call it maintenance if you like) - This will hinder your bandwidth, as you probably know.
 
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Interesting.....
Is this with the E1000 driver?
Have you tried the VirtIO type/drivers. (You'll need to install drivers within Windows)

BTW I notice that vmbr1 is also your main PVE IP (call it maintenance if you like) - This will hinder your bandwidth, as you probably know.
Let me try that..... will report back! I just moved everything to that PVE IP (and eliminated the 1000mb port all together to test) If I can get this to work, It will be separate again
 
I am using vmbr with enp7s0 as seen below, but in the VM i am limited to 1g networking I did try to install the realtek drivers on the windows side, but it simply says it can't find a device with that hardware EDIT: Not trying to passthrough the device
With this configuration, Windows is going to report the speed of the virtual device you have configured in the VM. Such reporting does not affect the actual transfer speed.
 
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Maybe OP should do a Speed test?
We are assuming his NIC (in Proxmox) is actually connected at 10gb.
 
That is the Ticket! Nic device showed up as unknown, I downloaded virtio drivers for windows, It is oddly displaying 10GB connections, But I tested with a simple file transfer between a Virtual 2019 server, and my desktop (which has 2.5g card as well) , and got 280mb/s so above 2gb.....

But as BobhWasatch said, I had not really tested speed prior to this....

I will spin up another server and test speed with the E1000


 

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That is the Ticket! Nic device showed up as unknown, I downloaded virtio drivers for windows, It is oddly displaying 10GB connections, But I tested with a simple file transfer between a Virtual 2019 server, and my desktop (which has 2.5g card as well) , and got 280mb/s so above 2gb.....


I will spin up another server and test speed with the E1000
It displays 10 Gbit because that is what the virtio driver claims. It says that regardless of the actual network speed. The E1000 driver "knows" that an E1000 is 1 Gbit so that is what Windows sees even if the network is 100 or 2.5G or 10G or whatever. But you won't be limited to that speed because it is all fake.

Generally speaking you should get better speeds with virtio though because it is designed for virtualization whereas the E1000 choice emulates the actual E1000 hardware and so has higher overhead.
 
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The Virtio is a bit faster....... I used a simple robocopy between the 2 different servers of mapped drives but even the fastest is calculated at 1.59GBps

NEW server with E1000
Bytes : 1.477 g 1.477 g 0 0 0 0
Times : 0:00:12 0:00:12 0:00:00 0:00:00


Speed : 131191264 Bytes/sec.
Speed : 7506.824 MegaBytes/min.
Ended : Wednesday, March 20, 2024 1:40:43 PM
****************************************************
Server with Virtio
Bytes : 1.477 g 1.477 g 0 0 0 0
Times : 0:00:07 0:00:07 0:00:00 0:00:00


Speed : 198992622 Bytes/sec.
Speed : 11386.449 MegaBytes/min.
Ended : Wednesday, March 20, 2024 1:40:59 PM
 

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