Problem connecting Pi4 via GENET

Happy New Year to all!

After a New Year break of three weeks during which my Pi4B was switched off, on restarting it would not connect via Ethernet. The Network settings have not been altered, and connecting via the ROD stack’s WiFi works. I’m using a TP-Link range extender to get a cabled connection to the Pi (the router is downstairs); this worked fine with the Pi4B before the switch-off, and still works with a RO Pi1, so I conclude the issue is not with the TP-Link or the cable. The EtherGenet module is listed under *modules.

Any/all suggestions or advice gratefully received.

What is the output of the following commands?

*egeinfo
*ifconfig -a
*show inet*

What is the output of the following commands?

*egeinfo
EtherGENET interface statistics

ege0: GENET, motherboard, up

Interface driver : ege
Interface unit : 0
Interface location : Motherboard
Interface EUI48 : D8:3A:DD:77:6E:75
Interface controller: GENET
Interface media : 100baseT full duplex
Running time : 0d, 0h 0m 48s
Packets sent : 42
Packets received : 187
Bytes sent : 9164
Bytes received : 64245
Send errors : 0
Receive errors : 0
Undelivered packets : 0
*

*ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 32768
groups: lo
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0×1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
ege0: flags=808843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,AUTOCONF4> mtu 1500
lladdr d8:3a:dd:77:6e:75
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX half-duplex)
status: active
inet 169.254.117.110 netmask 0xffff0000 broadcast 169.254.255.255
*

show inet
Inet$EtherDevice : WLanBWFM
Inet$EtherIP4Addr : lo0=127.0.0.1/8 ege0=169.254.117.110/16
Inet$EtherIP6Addr : lo0=::1/128 lo0=fe80::1/64
Inet$EtherIPAddr : 169.254.117.110
Inet$EtherIPMask : 255.255.0.0
Inet$EtherType : ege0
Inet$HostName : RiscosPi4
Inet$IsGateway :
Inet$LocalAddr : 6e75fea9
Inet$MimeMappings : InetDBase:MimeMap
inet$NNTPserver : news.btinternet.com
Inet$Path : SCSI::240GB_SSD.$.Internet.
Inet$ResolverCacheFails : 0
Inet$ResolverDelay : 5
Inet$ResolverDelayCS : 500
Inet$ResolverExpiryDelay : 3000
Inet$ResolverFailedExpiryDelay : 3000
Inet$ResolverFlags : 0
Inet$ResolverRetries : 3
Inet$Resolvers : ýýýýýýýýýýýýýýýý!!!
Inet$ResolverTTL : 8640000
Inet$RouteDOptions :
inet$SMTPpassword : REDACTED
inet$SMTPserver : mail.btinternet.com
inet$SMTPusername :REDACTED
Inet$Started : Yes
Inet$Startup : Choices:Internet.Startup
InetDBase$Path : SCSI::240GB_SSD.$.Internet.files.
InetSetup$Dir : SCSI::240GB_SSD.$.InetSetup
InetSetup$Driver$Motherboard : Broadcom GENET:ege0:EtherGENET:0.01:EtherGENET
InetSetup$Driver$SDIO_Slot_2 : BCM43 WiFi:wbw0:WLanBWFM:0.05:WLanBWFM
InetSetup$Driver$Serial : PPP:ppp0:PPP:1.13:PPP:P
*

The Ethernet interface is working as it is receiving packets.

If you have set it up to use DHCP, your router isn’t providing the IP address information for some reason.

If you had set it up for a static IP, you haven’t any more, and need to re-enter the details in !Configure.

Thanks Druck, that clarified the issue. No idea why the router should have stopped serving DHCP addresses to the Pi, but after some trial and error (haven’t done this for quite a few years) I managed to set up a static IP address and am now reconnected.

Now that you have it working, could you repeat the first two commands

*egeinfo
*ifconfig -a

I’m interested in the link speed and duplex

@ George

media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX half-duplex)

I haven’t seen an half-duplex hub in decades, so are you sure the issue is not originating from the ethernet cable or the hub/switch where your Pi is connected?

My RISC OS Pi 4B says the same even though it’s configured as EGELink Auto 0 and is on a gigabit full duplex switch. An identical Pi running Linux (ethtool -s) says 1000Mb/s Full Duplex.

“100/half” often indicates that one end of the link (e.g. the switch) set to a fixed speed, and the other end is set to auto-negotiate speed and duplex.

Or you have a broken cat5/6 and it can only run at 100mbps.

Now that you have it working, could you repeat the first two commands…I’m interested in the link speed and duplex

*egeinfo
EtherGENET interface statistics

ege0: GENET, motherboard, up

Interface driver : ege
Interface unit : 0
Interface location : Motherboard
Interface EUI48 : D8:3A:DD:77:6E:75
Interface controller: GENET
Interface media : 100baseT full duplex
Running time : 0d, 4h 39m 43s
Packets sent : 58238
Packets received : 164116
Bytes sent : 10730502
Bytes received : 141182900
Send errors : 0
Receive errors : 0
Undelivered packets : 0
*ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 32768
groups: lo
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0×1
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
ege0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lladdr d8:3a:dd:77:6e:75
groups: egress
media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX half-duplex)
status: active
inet 192.168.1.233 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
*

As for connection speed, Fast.com reports 27 Mbps typically, which is not far short of the 32-4 Mbps my Wintel laptop gets on the same network. WiFi on the Pi runs around 12 Mbps.

Interface media : 100baseT full duplex

media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX half-duplex)

Hmmm. Not quite sure of what I’m looking at there, but the optimist says you have a 100Mb full duplex capable card, but the switch it’s connected to is not well featured enough to do auto-negotiate of the duplex and so the connection fails down to 100Mb half duplex.
The result of that would be 25%-30% of the throughput possible if the switch and card agreed on the duplex and did 100Mb full

…the switch it’s connected to is not well featured enough to do auto-negotiate of the duplex and so the connection fails down to 100Mb half duplex.

This may well be true: the TP-Link range-extender I’m using is elderly, and I’m only using it because EE/BT in their wisdom have configured their latest routers not to work well with a cabled connection to the power-line setup I was using previously*. Probably time to consult Mr Amazon about a new range-extender…
[*according to a BT engineer who dealt with my complaint – a potential 30+Mbps connection operating at 1.0-1.5Mbps – “our latest router doesn’t work well with powerline – why don’t you just use WiFi (unspoken inference: like the rest of humanity)?”]

George said:

EE/BT in their wisdom have configured their latest routers not to work well with a cabled connection to the power-line setup

I’m not a big fan of the BT routers, especially how they prevent you from using a 10.×.×.x network address, but I would say the BT discs are pretty good for extending the Wi-Fi range.

George, if you have a BT Smart Hub2 I would recommend you get a BT Disc extender. They have a single ethernet port that allows a wired device to be connected. I used a couple of them to extend the signal around a large, old, stone house, where my computer room was a long way from the main BT router on the 3rd floor. I connected a small 8-port Gb ethernet switch to the disc and it worked very well at connecting a number of devices (Pi4, RiscPC, Windows Laptop, PlayStation 4, and an old Mac. As well as providing a strong WiFi signal to the whole top floor.

Due to the way that UK houses are wired, Powerline networks can be extremely unreliable from one ring main to another – the RCD trips in your distribution board may or may not be electrically compatible with high-frequency networking. There’s no standard to comply with, they’re just meant to turn the power off quickly, not route network packets. Consequently some makes are electrically transparent, others are significant attenuators to high-frequency signals. Powerline is a bit rubbish.

I switched to a Mercusys Halo mesh network and have not looked back. They can be operated in an access-point mode which makes the mesh behave like a wired local network of switches – plug your router into one, you printer into another, your TV into a third (or all into the same one depending), and they all behave as though they’re physically wired together. Plus you get WiFi all over the house (and the garden). Highly recommended.

Powerline is a bit rubbish.

A bit useless chez-moi because the bedroom and living room sockets are on different phases.
That, plus the nastiness of thunderstorms, is why I’m WiFi as much as possible (even if three metres from the router my signal barely exists thanks to a metre thick stone/rubble wall in the way…

Plus you get WiFi all over the house (and the garden).

Depends on the house.
My bedroom? Just.
Mom’s bedroom? Nothing.
Kitchen? Yes.
Back kitchen? Just.
Bathroom/toilet? Nothing.
Out where I park the car? Nothing.
Directly out front? Just about.
Anywhere else? Nothing.

My experience mirrors nemo. I used to swear by Powerline as it worked really well for networking upstairs/downstairs for many years, but performance was always fairly poor, and gradually deteriorated despite me upgrading the units used. Crunch time hit when I needed to transfer a DVD-sized data disc image from downstairs to upstairs and the copy operation reported more than 24 hours to go. I copied it onto a USB stick and walked it upstairs. The powerline had to go.

Ultimately I’ve switched to a mesh solution which has taken me close to gigabit round the house. I’ve used a 4 node setup (could have possibly got away with 3) but the net result has worked well. However, it is important to choose units with dedicated backhaul radios if using it for “infrastructure” replacement as I have done, so that you don’t halve your bandwidth by using the main radios for node-to-node communications. The units with dedicated backhaul tend to be a touch pricier, but will reward you with a much better setup.

The nodes themselves allow up to 2.5 Gbit LAN connections for NAS and high speed client connections, although I’d imagine most folks would be fine with gigabit node connections. This allows local machines to be wired up to the nodes, and then the mesh to be used to provide the room-to-room infrastructure.

As an aside, I’ve had really bad experiences with range extenders and BT routers (and powerline+range extenders) when working with modern wifi-enabled printers. I strongly encourage all wifi users to migrate away from that to mesh wifi, as it solves a lot of problems. Of course, it isn’t perfect either (many require a mobile app to conigure them, for a start), but it is generally a much better setup.

It’s interesting to hear from people who have successful WiFi coverage in their houses. The first house we had WiFi in was built in 1954, standard brick cavity wall construction. The current house was built in 1970, same construction. Nothing special or out of the ordinary in either of them. WiFi coverage? Only just, and not reliable. Doesn’t really reach the far end of the sun lounge; doesn’t reach the garden at all. There is currently a mesh network with backhaul in a different band from the coverage. The backhaul has a directional antenna at one end, and experiments showed that it really does increase the signal strength by about 8dB when optimally oriented, and that’s the way it stays. The two ends of the link are not even 5 metres apart but inevitably go through a wall. Even the backhaul isn’t reliable.

Previously I had a power line link between upstairs and downstairs. Very poor speed (1200 Mbps devices struggling to achieve 100Mbps) because of the well-known problem of getting signals through the breakers.

My experience mirrors nemo. I used to swear by Powerline as it worked really well for networking upstairs/downstairs for many years

+1

I now use power regulators and pure sine units for all digital equipment (included retro systems). Yes, it’s a bit of an expensive choice, but the peace of mind has no price, everything works now, and no weird glitches here and there.

The issues around breakers and phases was sorted with the AV2 standard of they supported MIMO as it could use neutral and earth which are common to shared busbars on sockets in most houses.

I sat and thought for a while and drew a floor plan of upstairs/downstairs.

Then I drilled holes in the garage ceiling and an upstairs wall, plus more downstairs walls.
Then I ran CAT6 cable from a patch panel by the router (in the garage) to all the locations I wanted a network point.

I might be a bit unusual, although I did see an episode of Grand Designs where the guy built his new home with a central riser for the network cabling and flood wired his new house with connections from each room back to his server / equipment room

The issues around breakers and phases was sorted with the AV2 standard of they supported MIMO as it could use neutral and earth which are common to shared busbars on sockets in most houses.

Not much help if they’re RCCBs.

Using a current BT/EE router IME vertical WiFi propagation is much better than horizontal. The setting is a 90-year old brick-built house with conventional wooden floors (joist + boards). A WiFi signal booster is required for the telly because it is not line-of-sight with the router (2 walls in the way), even though the direct distance is only about 25 feet. By contrast, the Pi4B has no problem getting a strong WiFi signal upstairs, I suspect because it is virtually directly above the router, with merely an inch of wood and an inch of plasterboard intervening. However, as the Pi won’t do better than about 12Mbps wirelessly (ROD stack), I prefer a wired connection to a range-extender.

Trying out *Configure EGELINK there is no option to select speed 1000, only 10 or 100 along with Half or Full duplex. After setting it back auto, egeinfo now shows it operating at the expected speed of

1000baseT full duplex

Not much help if they’re RCCBs

You mean RCBOs as RCCB is a common Residual Current Circuit Breaker which controls a common phase, and neutral bar.

Most older homes that are impacted by poor wifi signals due to construction will be most likely protected by a single RCD (or RCCB, hopefully not an ELCB) to a common busbar.

Those with RCBOs, if they’re comliant with IEC 61000-4 which all should be, Powerline adapters will work fine with them, if they dont, they’re most either not compliant or if they were tested would beclassed as faulty.