Alacritech - Server Accelerator FAQ

Home > Support > Support FAQs > Server Accelerator FAQ

Server Accelerator FAQ

Platform Considerations
Features, Specs, and Protocols
Installation and Configuration
Teaming
Miscellaneous
Troubleshooting

All OSes
Microsoft Windows 2000
1. When I select "Alacritech Slicteam Configurator", why does the properties button remain grayed out?
2. Why doesn't the SLIC object appear in the Performance Monitor?
Windows Server 2008
1. Why do I not have offload by default on Server 2008?
Linux
1. Which versions of Linux are supported?
Gigabit

Platform Considerations

Q. What operating systems are supported by the Alacritech Accelerators?

Microsoft Windows Versions:

x86 (32 bit)
Windows 2000	Supported by release 7 drivers
Windows XP	Supported by release 7 drivers
Windows 2003 Windows 2003 R2	Supported by release 7 and release 9 drivers¹
Windows Virtual PC	May be supported under later version of SNP.
Windows Virtual Server 2005	Supported by release 9 drivers¹
Windows Sever 2008	Supported by release 9.1.0.1283 (inbox) and later drivers³
x64 (AMD64/EM64T 64 bit)
Windows Sever 2008	Supported by release 9.1.0.1283 (inbox) and later drivers³
Windows 2003 Windows 2003 R2	Supported by release 9 drivers¹
Windows XP	Supported by release 9 drivers^1, 2
IA64 (intel Itanium 64 bit)
Any	Not supported

1 Release 9 drivers are designed to work with Microsoft's SNP [Scalable Networking Pack] release only. They will not work on machines which have not had SNP installed. Release 9 drivers do not support Alacritech 1000 series adapters (2000-100007, 2000-100009, SES1001T, SES1001F). Series 2000 and later adapters (includes all other Alacritech Gigabit and higher products) are supported by release 9 and later.

2 The Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing service is enabled by default on XP, and must be disabled in order for TCP offload to occur. See the Microsoft SNP knowledge base article [KB91222] for details.

3 The 9.1.0.1283 driver is included in the Microsoft Server 2008 install image.

Linux: An unsupported open source standard (no TCP offload) NIC driver is available for Linux at http://slicoss.sourceforge.net
Other Operating Systems: An SDK is available for porting to other operating systems. Please contact us for more information.
Not Supported To request future support, send email to info@alacritech.com

VMWare Server

Q. What are the hardware requirements for Alacritech Accelerators?

PCI cards

Alacritech PCI cards are PCI 2.1 and PCI 2.2 compliant, and require that the host system be PCI 2.1 compliant. They will auto-detect and function correctly in 32 or 64 bit slots, at either 33 or 66 Mhz. For the gigabit product, there is an additional requirement for +3.3vdc supply on PCI 2.1 systems. Since this 3.3v supply is not present on all PCI 2.1 systems, Alacritech Gigabit products include an LED on the top of the card to indicate the presence of this supply.

PCI-X is backwards compatible to PCI. Like any other PCI card, the Alacritech PCI cards can also be placed in PCI-X slots, however they will force all devices on the same bus to operate in PCI mode, which may reduce the performance of the other devices.

Alacritech PCI Cards
Part Number	Product Description
2000-100000	PCI 10/100 Copper 4-port Network Accelerator
2000-100001	PCI 10/100 Copper 2-port Network Accelerator
2000-100004	PCI 10/100 Copper 1-port Network Accelerator
2000-100007	PCI Gigabit Copper 1-port Network Accelerator
2000-100009	PCI Gigabit Fiber 1-port Network Accelerator
SES1001T	PCI Gigabit Copper 1-port iSCSI Accelerator
SES1001F	PCI Gigabit Fiber 1-port iSCSI Accelerator

PCI-X cards

Alacritech PCI-X cards are PCI-X 1.0a compliant. This implies that they are also backwards compatible with PCI 2.2 (and most PCI 2.1). This means that the cards should function correctly in any PCI-X 133, 100 or 66 Mhz slot, as well as in standard 32 or 64 bit PCI 66 Mhz or 33 Mhz slots. For optimal performance multiport PCI-X cards should be placed in 100 Mhz or faster PCI-X slots.

Alacritech PCI-X Cards
Part Number	Product Description
SEN1811XT	PCI-X Gigabit Copper 1-port Network Accelerator
SES1811XT	PCI-X Gigabit Copper 1-port iSCSI Accelerator
SEN1812XT	PCI-X Gigabit Copper 2-port Network Accelerator
SES1812XT	PCI-X Gigabit Copper 2-port iSCSI Accelerator
SEN2001XT	PCI-X Gigabit Copper 1-port Network Accelerator
SEN2001XF	PCI-X Gigabit Fiber 1-port Network Accelerator
SES2001XT	PCI-X Gigabit Copper 1-port iSCSI Accelerator
SES2001XF	PCI-X Gigabit Fiber 1-port iSCSI Accelerator
SEN2002XT	PCI-X Gigabit Copper 2-port Network Accelerator
SEN2002XF	PCI-X Gigabit Fiber 2-port Network Accelerator
SES2002XT	PCI-X Gigabit Copper 2-port iSCSI Accelerator
SES2002XF	PCI-X Gigabit Fiber 2-port iSCSI Accelerator

PCI-Express cards

Alacritech PCI-Express cards are x4 (four lane) PCI-Express 1.0a compliant and should work in any PCI-Express slot that supports x4 operation.

Alacritech PCI-Express Cards
Part Number	Product Description
SEN1822ET	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Copper 2-port Network Accelerator
SES1822ET	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Copper 2-port iSCSI Accelerator
SEN2102ET	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Copper 2-port Network Accelerator
SEN2102EF	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Fiber 2-port Network Accelerator
SES2102ET	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Copper 2-port iSCSI Accelerator
SES2102EF	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Fiber 2-port iSCSI Accelerator
SEN2104ET	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Copper 4-port Network Accelerator
SEN2104EF	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Fiber 4-port Network Accelerator
SES2104ET	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Copper 4-port iSCSI Accelerator
SES2104EF	PCI-Express x4 Gigabit Fiber 4-port iSCSI Accelerator

Q. What are the physical connector types for the Alacritech Accelerators?

The physical network connector types are listed in the product ID map.

Q. What are the hardware requirements for Alacritech driver software?

Alacritech drivers for Microsoft Windows are currently supported on IA32 and x64 compatible architecture.
Alacritech SNP compatible drivers (Release 9 and later) are not recommended for systems with less than 512MB memory.

Features, Specs, and Protocols

Q. What types of software are likely to be incompatible with Alacritech TCP offload?

SNP Aware drivers

The SNP Aware TCP offload driver will have the same incompatabilities as SNP itself. In most cases this will manifest as a failure to offload rather than a general network failure. See the Microsoft SNP knowledge base article [KB91222] for details.

Non SNP Aware (ATCP) drivers (Release 7 and earlier)

NDIS filters and TDI filters

Any software that contains an NDIS intermediate driver/filter is unlikely to function correctly with Alacritech offload enabled. These filters rely on being able to read packet headers, and if the TCP connection is offloaded to the network card, the packet headers will be unavailable. The effect of an NDIS filter conflict will usually be that the filter fails to function, or that it will cause all TCP connections to fail, however more catastophic failure modes up to and including BSOD are possible.

There is no reason why a well written TDI filter could not be compatible with the Alacritech TCP offload function. However, this often seems not to be the case.

Network Sniffers(NDIS)

In practice, a network sniffer will only show the first two stages of the initial TCP three-way handshake, and all further TCP traffic for that connection will be invisible.

Firewalls(NDIS/TDI)

In theory there is no reason why a simple level three firewall could not co-exist with partial TCP offload, but it doesn't seem to be the case that any can. Certainly functions like NAT or application specific filtering on TCP/IP would be incompatible. It is possible to run a full firewall on an external interface that does not offload, while TCP is offloaded on an internal interface - but it depends on the firewall software you are using. Unfortunately Alacritech does not currently have a list of compatible products. Feedback is welcome on this subject; please email Alacritech support to help us update this FAQ.

Note that the built-in Microsoft TCP/IP filtering will work with Alacritech TCP offload on release 6.0.1.0 and later, but not on prior versions.

Microsoft ISA Server is NOT compatible with Alacritech TCP offload.

Miscellaneous

The following programs and/or protocols are known to be incompatible with our current TCP offload drivers:

DNE: Deterministic Network Extender(NDIS)
DNE from Deterministic Networks is incompatible with Alacritech's TCP offload. If DNE is enabled while TCP offload is enabled, all TCP traffic will fail. DNE is installed by default when the current version of (as of 06/03/03)NetIQ's Chariot is installed on a system. DNE can be disable from the Local Area Connection Properties.
Microsoft Network Load Balancing(not sure)
Microsoft Network Load Balancing is incompatible with Alacritech's TCP offload. Enabling NLB on Alacritech interfaces will typically cause a system crash.

Q. Which protocols work with the Server Adapters?

The Alacritech Server Adapter works with all ethernet protocols supported by the Windows operating system. However, the performance gains of Alacritech Fast Path will only be experienced with TCP/IP.

Q. Are Alacritech Server Adapters Microsoft certified?

Yes. Microsoft Certified Network adapter drivers are available for all supported Windows operating sytems. Some bugfix drivers may not be windows certified, but a certified driver will always be available for all supported platforms.

Most, but not all, officially released drivers will also have HCL certification for the intermediate teaming driver. Check to documentation for the individual release for this information.

The Alacritech drivers are not certified as iSCSI HBAs. This is because the Alacritech iSCSI solution is not an HBA. See the iSCSI FAQ for more details.

Q. Do Alacritech Server Adapters support PPTP (Point to Point Tunneling Protocol) or IPSec?

Yes, but the traffic will not be offloaded.

Q. Which of the following features are supported? VLAN Tagging, QoS, Jumbo Frames?

Driver Features
Driver Version	Feature
Driver Version	VLAN Tagging	QoS (Quality of Service)	Jumbo Frames
Release 6.x	No	No	Yes
Release 7.x	Yes¹	No	Yes²
Release 9.x	Yes³	No	Yes²

Q. Does Alacritech have a DOS driver?

No. Alacritech does not have an NDIS4 (DOS) driver. For those functions that require a DOS driver (i.e., Symantec Ghost) we recommend that you use a preinstallation environment instead. Alacritech supports the BartPE Preinstall Environment. The PE package may work for WinPE as well.

Q. Do Alacritech Drivers support 802.3x Flow Control?

Yes, All current Alacritech drivers are set to respond to 802.3x pause frames, but not generate them. This behavior is not changeable by end users.

Installation and Configuration

Q. Does Alacritech support multiple default gateways?

Applies to: Non-SNP aware drivers only.

No. The Alacritech TCP stack doesn't allow for multiple default gateways, and when multiple default gateways are defined, the one that Alacritech chooses to use is not necessarily going to be the same one that Microsoft chooses. This means sometimes it will work just fine, and other times it will cause bizarre errors that are very difficult to troubleshoot. The most common symptom is that you can have icmp traffic (like ping) take a different route to a target than TCP traffic.

We would like to point out that even Microsoft does not recommend multiple default gateways on disjoint networks. Reference their whitepaper on TCP/IP Implementation

When a computer is multihomed with NICs attached to disjoint networks (networks that are separate from and unaware of each other, such as a private network using private addressing and the Internet), routing problems may arise. It is often necessary to set up static routes to the private networks in this situation.

When configuring a computer to be multihomed on two disjoint networks, the best practice is to configure the default gateway on the interface connected to the largest and least-known network, in which the default route summarizes the most destinations. Then, either add static routes or use a routing protocol to provide connectivity to the hosts on the smaller or better-known network. Avoid configuring a different default gateway on each side; this can result in unpredictable behavior and loss of connectivity.

Q. Which PCI/PCI-X slot should I use for my Alacritech Accelerator?

Use common sense and a knowledge of how the busses work to optimize performance, remembering the following:

All devices on the bus will only go as fast as the slowest device.
System performance is maximized by distributing load evenly across all buses.
Slot numbers do not necessarily bear any relationship to busses. Consult the motherboard documentation to be sure.
Internal devices will often share the bus with PCI/PCI-X slots.
The Alacritech Accelerators may only be installed in a bus-mastering PCI slot. This isn't usually a problem unless you've got really old hardware.
Try not to put PCI cards into PCI-X slots. PCI 66 Mhz is slower than PCI-X 66 Mhz.
Any Alacritech PCI or PCI-X card should function correctly in any standard PCI or PCI-X slot. An SEN2002XT (133Mhz 64bit PCI-X) will still work in a 32 bit 33 Mhz PCI slot. Just don't expect to be able to achieve wire speed on both ports in this configuration.

For PCI-e cards, any x4 or greater slot is fine. Since PCI-e is not a shared bus, cards in other slots cannot affect the behavior of a card in a given slot.

You may need to consult your system documentation to determine the corespondence between PCI slots and PCI busses.

Q. Do Alacritech network adapters support multiple IP addresses on the same subnet?

Yes, this is perfectly acceptable under certain conditions. It is not recommended if NetBT is enabled on any of the interfaces that share the same subnet. It is also acceptable when using multiple IP addresses for the same interface - like in a cluster, or with virtual servers - even if NetBT is used.

If NetBT is required, Alacritech recommends that you not run multiple interfaces on the same subnet for the following reasons:

(Applies to: Non-SNP aware drivers only. ) If you have both Alacritech and non-Alacritech adapters on the same subnet normal NetBT/WINS behavior can cause packets to go to the wrong interface. Since we have a separate stack, the packets will be dropped. The net result is that no TCP connections will work.
If you have homogeneous multiple interfaces on the same subnet (Either or all Alacritech, or all other) services that rely on NetBT (such as browsing the network neighborhood) will perform erratically. NetBT was not designed to handle this situation.

If you need additional network bandwidth in an environment that requires NetBT, it is recommended that you team multiple interfaces into a single logical interface.

In many cases, such as when you have a subnet reserved for iSCSI traffic, NetBT is not only unnecessary, but undesirable. In this case simply disable NetBT on all iSCSI interfaces, and it becomes a non-issue.

Q. Can I upgrade the Alacritech driver when I am connected via Terminal Services?

During the upgrade process, all Alacritech interfaces will be disconnected, and any connections that pass though them will be terminated. If your terminal services connection passes through an Alacritech interface, it will be terminated and the host will be left in an indeterminate state. You should only do upgrades via terminal services if you are absolutely positive that the terminal services session does not pass though an Alacritech interface.

Teaming

Q. Which Port Aggregation/Trunking/Teaming protocols are supported?

Alacritech supports the following teaming methods:

Alacritech Teaming Support Matrix		Alacritech Teaming Type
Alacritech Teaming Support Matrix		802.3ad/FEC¹	Outbound Only	Hot Standby Failover	Combination of Types
Release 6.x	Single Adapter	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Release 6.x	Multiple Adapters	Yes	Yes²	Yes	No
Release 7.x		Yes	No	Yes	No
Release 9.x		Yes	No	Yes	No

1. Must be used in conjunction with an FEC or 802.3ad compatible switch, and team configuration must be done manually on switch, as Alacritech's implementation does not support PAgP or LACP.

2. Outbound only teaming across multiple adapters will not be offloaded, and thus is not a recommended configuration.

Q. Which switches are compatible with Alacritech's port aggregation (teaming)?

With just a few exceptions, any switch that supports 802.3ad link aggregation or Cisco Gigabit EtherChannel is compatible with Alacritech teaming. For more detail configuring teaming, please see our Teaming Guide.

Certain types of switch have been determined to be incompatible with Alacritech teaming. They are as follows:

All unmanaged switches.
Switches that only support Destination MAC based packet distribution. Examples include:
DELL Power Connect 5224
DELL Power Connect 5012
Intel 470T
Older versions of Alcatel/Xylan switches use OmniChannel (as used on the OmniS/R); a proprietary protocol that is not compatible. Newer version also support 802.3ad, and will function correctly.

Q. Are there things I can do to optimize teaming performance?

Certainly. Refer to the Teaming Guide

Miscellaneous

Q. How do I match driver the version to the release version?

Non-SNP Aware Drivers: The ATCP driver version displayed by the slicuser program (See the next question) is the same as the release version for all general releases. Special maintenance releases may not conform to this, but if they do not, documentation will be provided.
SNP Aware Drivers: The version of the slic.sys file is the release version.

Q. How do I determine my driver versions?

Non-SNP Aware Drivers

For Release 7, there are three drivers in the release - the miniport driver (slic100.sys), the fastpath driver (atcp.sys), and the teaming driver (slicteam.sys). You can confirm the driver versions by examining the file properties of the individual files (They install into %SYSTEMROOT%\System32\drivers), or by using the slicuser program.

Use the slicuser program to determine driver versions:

-> Start
   -> Alacritech
      -> Slicuser

SNP Aware Drivers

For release 9 there is only the miniport driver (slic.sys). To determine the driver version:

First, pull up the properties pane for an Alacritech interface.

interface properties screen capture

Click configure, then select the driver tab.

driver properties screen capture

Q. Where can I get the latest drivers for my Alacritech Server Adapter?

All current Alacritech drivers are available from our driver download page.

Q. What SNMP trap support is included with the Alacritech drivers?

Standard SNMP traps, for example, the link up/link down trap from the RFC 1213 MIB-II, are supported by the slic driver. SNMP must be installed and configured in network properties. When you configure SNMP, you can specify the IP address of a server to receive traps. Using the snmputil program from the Windows 2000 Resource Kit allows you to view traps ("snmputil trap"). If you want to receive link up/down traps, make sure you specify a trap destination on a different subnet than the one you are unplugging, or you will not get the traps.

Here is what the link down/link up traps look like:


Incoming Trap:
  generic    = 2
  specific   = 0
  enterprise = .iso.org.dod.internet.private.enterprises.microsoft.software.systems.os.windowsNT.server
  agent      = 10.1.100.6
  source IP  = 10.1.100.6
  community  = public
  variable   = interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifIndex.16777221
  value      = Integer32 16777220
 
Incoming Trap:
  generic    = 3
  specific   = 0
  enterprise = .iso.org.dod.internet.private.enterprises.microsoft.software.systems.os.windowsNT.server
  agent      = 10.1.100.6
  source IP  = 10.1.100.6
  community  = public
  variable   = interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifIndex.16777221
  value      = Integer32 16777221

The IP addresses above are the address where the trap is coming from, not the address of the interface that caused the trap. To find the interface which caused the trap, you have to do something like:

snmputil walk 10.1.100.6 public .1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1, which will dump the whole interface table, including IP address and description (although description is usually dumped as a string of hex characters; not very useful unless you can translate hex to ASCII in your head).

This is all a lot easier with a genuine network management application, if you happen to have one.

Q. What is the TCP window size for Alacritech Accelerators?

For 100 Megabit products, the default is 11 * 1460 = 16060 bytes. For Gigabit products, the default is 65535 bytes. The defaults can be modified on a global or per port basis. See the Supported Network Tuning Parameters Document for more details.

Q. What Network/TCPIP tuning is supported?

For Non-SNP Aware drivers, a limited subset of the standard Microsoft TCP/IP tuning parameters is supported. For complete details, check out the Supported Network Tuning Parameters Document.

For SNP drivers, Alacritech supports all tuning parameters that are supported by Scalable Networking Pack.

Q. What advanced driver options are available?

There are a number, jumbo frames, VLAN Tagging, etc. See the Driver Options page for all the details.

Troubleshooting

Q. What are the most common problems refered to customer support?

Issue: Failure to use the setup program to install or upgrade: Applies to: Non-SNP aware drivers only.
You must use the setup program - either manually, or via the autorun if installing from CD - to properly install the Alacritech drivers.
The Alacritech driver suite consists of three components - a network driver, a TCP offload driver, and a teaming driver. The standard Windows install/upgrade methods are only capable of affecting the network driver. If, for instance, you install using the 'Found New Hardware Wizard', all you will get is the network driver. You will not have TCP offload. The situation with upgrades is even worse. If you use the device manager to upgrade a properly installed Alacritech driver, it will only upgrade the network driver portion. This will produce a version mismatch between the network driver and the offload and teaming drivers which could cause complete loss of network connectivity or system crash.

Solution: Run the setup program in the Alacritech distribution that you are trying to upgrade to.
Issue: Port Mismatch: Copper: You must have the same setting on the card and on the switch. If you have one side set to auto, and the other set to - for instance - 100FullDuplex, you will get a duplex mismatch. Since the side that is set to auto is not receiving a duplex negotiation signal, it is required by the spec to drop to half duplex. Voila, duplex mismatch.

Typical symptoms of duplex mismatch are excessive port errors recorded by the switch, and poor throughput on volume transfers. Usually ICMP pings will work just fine though.

Solution: Make setting on card and switch match.
Issue: Link Negotiation Failure: Fiber: You must have the same setting on the card and on the switch. If you have one side set to auto, and the other set to 1000Full, you will have a negotiation failure on one end.

The symptom of a fiber negotiation failure is a one sided link. One end of the connection will look perfectly fine, but the other end will show as down. No network traffic will flow.

Solution: Ensure that the negotiation settings on for the Alacritech port and the switch port match. See also this expanded treatment of this question.

Q. I'm having <ANY> problem.

The first place to start is the troubleshooting section of the manual. The manual can be found on line on the documentation page and in the doc directory of the distribution media.

Q. How can I determine if the Alacritech Accelerator is the source of my networking problem?

The easiest way eliminate (or confirm) the Alacritech driver as the source of a problem is to Disable TCP Offload on the card and see if the problem goes away. This test is almost always accurate in determining whether the problem is being caused by the Alacritech drivers or not.

Q. Why do I have no network connectivity?

Ensure that your network cables are securely connected at both ends and that you have link lights. Verify that you have assigned a valid IP address with the correct subnet mask to the interface(s) that are connected to the network. The ipconfig /all command is useful for this.

Q. I can ping my computer by IP address but not by name. What is wrong?

Ensure that your naming service is working correctly. NetBT is especially unreliable on multihomed hosts, and it may take several minutes after reboot (if at all) for it to recognize all hosts on the network. You can often help it along by running nbtstat -A <ip_address> in a command window.
If you are running a DNS server, but not WINS, make sure that you have the correct IP address for your DNS server. Use the nslookup command to ensure that you interface is in the DNS tables.
If you are running WINS, make sure you've entered the correct address for the WINS server.
If you are still stuck, refer to standard Microsoft help procedures.

Q. What can I do when pinging other computers on the network fails?

Make sure that the network cables are plugged into the correct port of the adapter. The lowest numbered SLIC interface in the system will correspond to the port marked "A" on the card. (SLIC1 corresponds to port A, SLIC2 to port B, etc.). Check the LED indicators on the adapter. Each port (labeled A through D) has two LEDs marked LNK and ACT. These lights help indicate if there is a problem with the adapter, switch or cable. Refer to the "LED Function Indicators" chart in the Alacritech Server Adapter Users Guide.

Make sure that the IP addresses of both the default gateway and the remote host are correct.

Q. How can I completely uninstall the Alacritech card and be sure I've gotten everything?

Refer to the Uninstall/Reinstall page.

Q. TCP connections can be established to other systems on the same subnet, but connections cannot be established to systems on the other side of a router. What is the problem?

Answer 1: ARP Caching

Applies to: Non-SNP aware drivers only.
The most common cause of this problem occurs when replacing another network adapter with an Alacritech adapter, and retaining the same IP address. Intervening network devices such as routers, bridges, firewalls, etc., will often cache ARP values (tables that relate MAC addresses to IP addresses) for an inordinately long time. Usually you can log into these devices to flush the ARP cache. If you are in a Microsoft environment and using WINS as your exclusive name resolution method, you may also need to restart your WINS server, as it can also cache ARP values.

Answer 2: Routing Loops

Applies to: Non-SNP aware drivers only.
If you have an Alacritech Accelerator and another brand adapter installed on your system, AND your network is configured such that the route from your system to the remote system is different than the route from the remote system back to your system (a routing loop), then it may not be possible to establish a TCP connection.

There are three ways to solve this problem:

Replace the existing adapter in your system with a Alacritech Accelerator, or
Reconfigure your network to eliminate the routing loop, or
Disable TCP/IP Offload on the interface(s) associated with the routing loop by following the instructions specified in "Disabling SLIC TCP/IP Offload on Select Interfaces" in Chapter 4 of the Users Guide.

Q. What is SLIC Event ID 5002, and what do I do about it.

SLIC Event 5002 indicates that an Alacritech port was no longer responding and had to be reset. Follow these troubleshooting steps

Q. Are there any built-in hardware diagnostics that I can run

Yes. See the diagnostics page

Q. Why does't the system recognize my gigabit card?

Usually this is because you have an old system that doesn't supply +3.3v PCI power. Open the case, and check that the green light on the top of the Alacritech gig card is on. Also, check to ensure that the card is properly seated in the PCI slot.

Q. Why don't I have link with gigabit fiber card?

Assuming that you network cables are good, that the card is installed properly, and that it passes all the diagnostics, then you probably have a mode mismatch between the card and the switch. Most switches that support 1000SX will have two possible modes: auto and 1000Full. The Alacritech drivers install by default as auto, but many sites, especially large ones, make it a policy to put the switch ports in 1000Full. For the Alacritech 1000x1F card to work properly, the mode on the card must match the mode on the switch.

To change the mode, use the configure button on the Local Area Connection properties window.

For users of Cisco Catalyst 6500 series switches running IOS 12.0 or later, you need to be aware that even though it is not obvious, these switches do support both auto and 1000Full modes. If the switch mode doesn't match the card mode, inconsistent link behavior will result.

According to the Cisco documentation for IOS 12.2: Autonegotiation can be disabled on gigabit module ports (not to be confused with 10/100/1000 ports) using the "speed nonegotiate" or "speed 1000" command.

Cisco has an excellent example of Configuring Link Negotiation on Gigabit Ethernet Ports on their documentation site. Look for the exact words Configuring Link Negotiation on Gigabit Ethernet Ports about half way down the page.

For a correctly functioning setup, both host and switch should either use autonegotiation (Alacritech recommends this), or both host and switch should not use autonegotiation.

Q. Why do I get Event ID 2019 "The server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool because the pool was empty." after installing Alacritech?

This is a bug in our 6.3.1.1 and earlier drivers. If you must use Release 6 drivers, a non-WHQL bugfix release driver is available from Alacritech support. Otherwise, upgrade to Release 7 or drivers.

Q. Windows Server 2003 crashes after upgrading from release 7.x (ATCP) driver to release 9.x (SNP) driver

Installation of Service Pack 2 for Server 2003 after ATCP drivers are installed breaks our upgrade process. See Alacritech Service Advisory #4 for details and solution.

Microsoft Windows 2000

Q. When I select "Alacritech Slicteam Configurator", why does the properties button remain grayed out?: There seems to be an occasional problem with Windows 2000 failing to register the dll for teaming. Fortunately, there is an easy fix. Open up a command window, and type:

regsvr32 /u slicteam.dll regsvr32 slicteam.dll
Q. Why doesn't the SLIC object appear in the Performance Monitor?: This is another installer error. The fix is to open up a CMD (dos prompt) window, cd to your driver distribution directory - either your cdrom drive, or the location where you unzipped the driver package to if you downloaded from the webs - and run the command lodctr atkcounters.ini. If that doesn't fix the problem, then you'll have to reinstall the driver

Windows Server 2008

Q. Why do I not have offload by default on Server 2008?: For whatever reason, Microsoft chose to ship Server 2008 with TCP offload globally disabled by default. Furthermore, the inbox driver installs each interface with TCP offload locally disabled. See this reference for instructions on how to enable or disable TCP Offload on Server 2008.

Linux

Q. Which versions of Linux are supported?: None

A non-accelerated open source driver is maintained by the slicoss project but it is not supported by Alacritech.

Gigabit

Q. How do I connect Gigabit adapters back-to-back?: As per the IEEE 802.3ab spec, all Alacritech Network and iSCSI Accelerators do automatic MDI/MDI-X detection, so no crossover cable is needed to connect two gigabit cards back-to-back. If a crossover cable is used, it will be detected, and the connection will still work correctly. If you disable autonegotiation by forcing the card to a particular mode operation, such as 100Base-T half duplex, this disables MDI/MDI-X detection and a crossover cable will be needed for a back-to-back connection.
Q. What link modes are supported by the Alacritech gigabit fiber cards?: All fiber Alacritech Accelerators are a 1000SX devices, and supports modes auto and 1000Fdx. In order to get link, you must match the mode of the port which you connect to. By default, the Alacritech card will use mode auto, whereas some switch vendors use mode 1000Fdx as the default. You will need to change one or the other.
Q. What link modes are supported by the Alacritech gigabit copper cards?: All copper Alacritech Accelerators support 10HD, 10FD, 100HD, 100FD, and 1000FD. They do not support 1000HD.