I218-LM ping times go through the roof after a couple of seconds on Lenovo x250 and T450s

[JBees]

We noticed lately that we are having poor ping times when pinging local resources that are connected with a LAN cable to a Cisco switch (WS-C3750-48PS-S 100MB fast ethernet) on certain Lenovo laptops, particularly the X250 and T450s. Both use the Intel I218-LM interface with the port built into the laptop shell while other models (X1 Carbon) use a proprietary dongle to connect the cable to. Only the models with the built in NIC port are showing the issue of very high ping times after a couple of seconds of operation.

When I ping a local file server the replies start out at 1-2ms reply times, After a couple of seconds they go up dramatically and the response times are

Reply from x.x.141.56: bytes=32 time=916ms TTL=127

Reply from x.x.141.56: bytes=32 time=1340ms TTL=127

Reply from x.x.141.56: bytes=32 time=105ms TTL=127

Reply from x.x.141.56: bytes=32 time=589ms TTL=127

Reply from x.x.141.56: bytes=32 time=527ms TTL=127

We found out that this issue does not occur when we remove the Synaptics Touchpad drivers and reboot the system. We have tried multiple different settings with regards to the advanced NIC settings

• Interrupt moderation: Default is enabled, same issue when set to disabled
• Jumbo Paket; Default is enabled, same issue when set to disabled
• Large Sent Offload V2 (IPv4): Default is enabled, same issue when set to disabled
• Legacy Switch Compatability Mode: Default is disabled, same issue when set to enabled
• Performance options:
  • Adaptive Interframe Spacing: Default is disabled, same issue when set to enabled
  • Flow control: Default is Tx and Rx enabled, same issue when set to disabled
  • Interrupt moderation rate: default is adaptive, same issue when set to disabled
  • Receive Side Scaling: Default is enabled, same issue when set to disabled
• Tried changing TCP/IP offloading Options with regards to IPv4 and no changed observed
• Removed energy efficient ethernet under power management to no avail
• We tried setting the link speed manually, the connection only works fine when we leave it to auto detect or 100MBps Full duplex (which is what the auto negotiation leads to), lower speeds or half duplex lead to non working connections.

After we change each of the above settings the ping times are back to 1-2ms after the adapter is reset but it quickly goes back to the high ping times posted above.

We also noticed that the issue comes back ~10 seconds after the Synaptics driver is installed and can provide procmon and wireshark logs for analysis.

When talking to Lenovo they mentioned that other folks are having similar issues and they resolved it by changing the storage drivers, so it appears there is some conflict with the Intel driver and other system components. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

[st4]

Hi AWSPM,

Thank you for the post. May I know what are the driver versions for the I218LM ? Thanks.

rgds,

wb

[MSchi11]

We are seeing the same issue with this device, we tried the latest driver from Lenovo which can be found here:

https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__support.lenovo.com_us_en_products_laptops-2Dand-2Dnetbooks_thinkpad-2Dx-2Dseries-2Dlaptops_thinkpad-2Dx250_downloads_DS101930&d=AwMGaQ&c=yIH1_-b1hO27QV_BdDph9suDL0Jq0WcgndLmIuQXoms&r=4YNmzWX_7VFDPgXoZRANQYcothWv8Y0EMgQUQon9fm0&m=Qx2bHkv6wpESRoWD6KHinWNyaFkUQiO5i6c5GEj1S4s&s=omDWuQM_a_xuTNGtjjPsivr... http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-x-series-laptops/thinkpad-x250/downloads/DS101930

This is becoming more and more critical for us.

Many thanks for your help.

[JBees]

Hi wb_Intel,

thanks for looking into it, we have tried the latest drivers 12.12.80.1950 as well as 12.12.80.19 & 12.12.50.7202.

Regards

awspm

[st4]

HI AWSPM<

Thank you for the info. we will check on this.

rgds,

wb

[st4]

Hi AWSPM,

Please try the following:

1) Uncheck all the power saver options found in the power management tab of the adapter properties in device manager.

2) Please share the device ID and etrackID using the powershell command below:

get-intelnetadapter | select *

Have you try any solution from Lenovo* about the storage driver?

Looking forward to your update. Thanks.

Regards,

wb

[JBees]

Hi wb,

Here the device ID from powershell

Description : Intel(R) Ethernet Connection (3) I218-LM

DeviceID : {A43B507A-6F2C-4566-910E-2D64833FDEE7}

DeviceStatus : 1

DeviceStatusString : Link Up

DriverVersion : 12.12.80.1950

ETrackID : 0x00000000

When we remove all power saving options of the NIC the ping times are good for about 10 seconds and then go back up, so that does not seem to help either.

Along with your questions we did some more testing and found that the issue with high ping times occurs when the Synaptics SMBus driver is installed and assigned IRQ18. When we remove the Synaptics driver the issue is gone and we can also get good ping times when install the touchpad drivers without the Synaptics SMBus driver. I compared this to a X1 Carbon generation 3 and there the Synaptics SMBus driver shares the same interrupt with the Mobile 5th generation Intel Core PCI express root port # 3:

We tested the steps from Lenovo but it did not help on the model we tried it on.

[JBees]

Just to clarify my earlier post.

• On X250 and T450s the Mobile 5th generation Intel Core PCI express root port # 3: & Synaptics SMBus driver share IRQ18 and the issue of high ping times is happening
• On X1 Carbon gen 3 the Mobile 5th generation Intel Core PCI express root port # 3: & Synaptics SMBus driver share IRQ18 and the issue of high ping times is NOT happening
• On X250 and T450s the Mobile 5th generation Intel Core PCI express root port # 3 on IRQ 18: & Synaptics SMBus driver REMOVED and the issue of high ping times is NOT happening

[st4]

Hi AWSPM,

Thank you for sharing the finding and the information. Will further check on this.

rgds,

wb

[JBees]

Hi WB

Do you have any news on this issue or do you need any other information?

Thanks

AWS

[st4]

Hi AWSPM,

Thank you for the follow up. Further checking we recommend you to contact Lenovo for further support.

rgds,

wb

[FNetw2]

Hi AWSPM,

We noticed the same (or very similar problem) on a few T450s and what helped in our case was a BIOS upgrade to 1.14. We are running on Intel drivers provided by Lenovo - the ones you get when installing them from Lenovo System Update. Hope that helps

Cheers,

fanofnetwork

[st4]

Hi fanofnetwork,

Thank you for sharing the fix

rgds,

wb

[JBees]

Hi Fanofnetwork

Thanks for sharing your experience. Unfortunately the issue is still present for us after updating to 1.14 but we are in touch with Lenovo to get this addressed.

cheers

AWSPM

[JDerm]

This issue is affecting me as well on my T450s. Has there been any progress?

[JBees]

We are waiting for a new driver from Lenovo, not sure if this will be a new LAN driver or a new Syanptics driver, those two seem to be involved.

[st4]

Hi AWSPM,

Thank you for the update. Hope to hear good news.

rgds,

wb

[JBees]

I can confirm that for us the issue is gone after updating the LAN drivers from here. http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds103293 Intel PRO/1000 LAN Adapter Software (Gigabit Ethernet Driver) for Windows 8.1 (64-bit), 7 (32-bit and 64-bit) - ThinkPad…

From the release notes

[Problem fixes]

- Fixed an issue where Network might be unstable when connecting to 100Mbps

network speed in Windows 7.

This works for us using Windows 8.1 x64, we noticed that after using this driver IRQL 18 is no longer assigned to the Synaptics SMBus driver but to the Mobile 5th generation Intel Core PCI express root port # 3.

Hope it helps for others.

[st4]

Hi AWSPM,

Thank you for sharing the information, glad the issue is fixed

rgds,

wb