13th gen Intel NUC wired networking issues

Installed and updated 14.0-RELEASE.

Local Netgear 4-port switch. I've tried two wired networking setups:
  • Integrated Intel I226-V
  • Realtek over USB
both causing issues.

As for the Intel card, dmesg shows:
igc0: <Intel(R) Ethernet Controller I226-V> mem 0x84200000-0x842fffff,0x84300000-0x84303fff at device 0.0 on pci2
igc0: PHY reset is blocked due to SOL/IDER session.
igc0: Using 1024 TX descriptors and 1024 RX descriptors
igc0: Using 4 RX queues 4 TX queues
igc0: Using MSI-X interrupts with 5 vectors
igc0: Ethernet address: 48:21:0b:60:9f:9d
igc0: netmap queues/slots: TX 4/1024, RX 4/1024

but netstat -i shows errors (±10/sec). Pluging a different machine with Linux via the very same cable to the very same switch port shows zero issues.

So, I tried the USB network card (Realtek chip). It's quite recent and works very well on Linux, but here it negotiates only this very limited 10baseT/UTP setup:

ue0: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=68009b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LINKSTATE,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
ether f4:6b:8c:7e:e2:28
inet 192.168.0.107 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
media: Ethernet autoselect (10baseT/UTP <full-duplex>)
status: active
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

Any ideas, how to get faster networking on this machine? Haven't tried 14.1-BETAx or CURRENT yet.
 
I have been suffering from random disconnects on the I226-V on this NUC13. Even happens after update to 14.3.
As far as I can determine there is a firmware update needed, but this is not available for separated download (only I225 is).
Further investigation I see t5hat only OEMs can access this. Since ASUS took over manufacturing NUCs it occurred to me that I should search on the ASUS Support Site. where I found a download for:
Code:
BIOS Update v0038 (Non-vPRO) for NUC13ANBix / NUC13ANHix / NUC13ANKix / NUC13VYKix
Version 0038   74.21 MB   2025/05/19
I downloaded this and used the EFI version, from the built-in UEFI shell to flash the update. No just have to hope the I226 was also updated by this.

Edit to add versions:
Code:
before: igc0: EEPROM V2.17-0
after:  igc0: EEPROM V2.32-0
 
Still fails, but not quite 100%, ping to some IPs still worked, but others did not send or receive.Interestingly could not ping LAN GW, but could ping some Internet IPs. ifconfig down; ifconfig up was sufficient to restore operation. Previously needed to disconnect/reconnect cable several times. Since this was first failure after BIOS upgrade it is probably not a fair test.
Ping is around 1.2ms to a LAN IP.; a ThinkPad with re0 gets 0.5ms (to same IP) so seems like I226-V is not working particularly well.
 
Just chiming in to say I am experiencing the same problems. It starts failing after a random time (around a week or so most often?) and then packets pass or not at random periods (ie, everything is alright for a few minutes, then most IPs fail for a few minutes, but not always all of them, sometimes ping still works to or from some Internet IPs). We have quite a few of the older NUC models and they all work fine.

Anyway that's the firmware I have now:
EEPROM V2.17-0

So I'll try the latest update, which is:
Code:
BIOS Update v0039 (Non-vPRO) for NUC13ANBix / NUC13ANHix / NUC13ANKix / NUC13VYKix
Version 0039 74.94 MB 2025/09/04

I'm not on site now though so that will have to wait until next week.

HSW, have you noticed improvement now a few months later?

diizzy, I'm on a gigabit network, using just CAT5e.
 
For the record, I just updated the BIOS to v0039. But since the problem was a bit random for me, I can't tell right now if it's solved.

I'll try to remember to post an answer here later, but no guarantee...
 
Are you on a 2.5Gbit network and what cabling are you using, CAT6A?
2.5 Gbit will work fine on Cat 5e up to around 100 meters; most home networks won't have cables that long. You can even do 10 GBit up to about 50 meters with Cat 5e.
 
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