USB NIC with PTP/IEEE1588 support

[ThomasZeGerman]

Does this exist?
Alternatively, laptops with integrated Ethernet port that use a chip that supports hardstamps could also be interesting I guess

 

[pimposh]

I210 from Intel should be what you look for or more timestamp oriented things devices.

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

I'm looking for USB (maybe thunderbolt), not PCIe adapters. Stuffing a PCIe nic into a thunderbolt GPU case isn't what I'm looking for.

 

[NablaSquaredG]

Delock 66045 might work. It has the ASIX AX88279 chip, which has PTP support: AX88279 USB 3.2 Gen1 to 2.5G Ethernet Controller | ASIX Electronics

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

Delock 66045 might work. It has the ASIX AX88279 chip, which has PTP support: AX88279 USB 3.2 Gen1 to 2.5G Ethernet Controller | ASIX Electronics

thanks! Ordered one, will report back how it goes, but it seems promising. Somehow failed to find it myself

 

[pimposh]

Alternatively, laptops with integrated Ethernet port that use a chip that supports hardstamps could also be interesting I guess

Hence my I210 answer

 

[sfx2000]

thanks! Ordered one, will report back how it goes, but it seems promising. Somehow failed to find it myself

I think the challenge here is that while the NIC might be able to sort out PTP, the USB interface doesn't have the timing accuracy over time so that source isn't reliable.

If you need a level of precison - consider GPS with PPS support over UART - most GPS chipsets from good vendors (ublox for example) do a very good job there.

I used to do some work on UMTS/C2K small cells, where PTP was one item for timing... and outside of that, other sources (GPS, TCXO)...

 

[sfx2000]

And for a homelab - having an NTP stratum 0/1 time source is always handy...

 

[NablaSquaredG]

If you need a level of precison - consider GPS with PPS support over UART - most GPS chipsets from good vendors (ublox for example) do a very good job there.

Ewww.

If you do it for your lab, then do it properly, grab an Intel i226 (or E810), and feed a real PPS signal into it

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

If you need a level of precison - consider GPS with PPS support over UART - most GPS chipsets from good vendors (ublox for example) do a very good job there.

Still need to get the timing signal into the computer somehow, and i'm limited to the laptop form factor for... reasons. its also more of a case of me wanting to try out something cool than anything critical

The adapter just arrived, but seems the stock driver doesn't ship with PTP support enabled, might have to compile it myself with the flag set for it?

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

Great, the driver doesn't build when I set the flag to enable PTP support, probably because the interface for PTP info is currently in flux and it hasn't been updated to reflect that, and the windows driver doesn't have it enabled either.

 

[NablaSquaredG]

Maybe try contacting the manufacturer ASIX, because they proudly showed PTP working with this chip on LinkedIn

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

patched the driver to at least get this output, can't test functionality yet with the stuff I have set up, but it was a tiny change, so probably should work.
Also sent an email to ASIX ofc.

fix: update to use kernel_ethtool_ts_info by ThomasTheGerman · Pull Request #4 · mmoya/asix-usb-nic-linux-driver

This change makes it compile again, I have no idea if what I did is what is intended and if it'll actually work, though.

github.com

Any easy ways to test if it actually works without having a ptp grandmaster in my hands yet?

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

Installed linuxptp

running ptp4l it seems to be able to talk to another computer in my network using hardware timestamps on one side and software timestamps on the other, great!

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

Maybe try contacting the manufacturer ASIX, because they proudly showed PTP working with this chip on LinkedIn

support said they're in the CNY break right now, but it's been forwarded to the dev team

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

There's some weirdness with the driver, on one of my machines it gets loaded by default, on the other the generic linux kernel driver gets loaded instead

Also I cannot set the time of the hardware clock, so it always starts in 1970 and can't be changed from that

phc_ctl[8605.133]: set: failed to set clock time: Broken pipe

phc_ctl[8670.426]: clock time is 7068.738150570 or Thu Jan 1 02:57:48 1970

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

somehow ptp4l is able to change the hardware time while phc_ctl isn't. Guess rather have this than the other way around.

However I just spent an entire day trying to make the ptp client on windows 11 sync to ptp4l (windows using softstamps, ptp4l using the adapter and hardstamps) and eventually just gave up and instead spend an hour getting the commercial but free-ish timebeat software to work.

 

[marc.jofre]

@ThomasZeGerman

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with this adapter in order to perform IEEE 1588 hardware timestamping capabilities.

With your experience, does this Delock 66045 USB to ethernet adapter implement PTP (hardware timestamp)?

Which drivers are needed to build a linux kernel for this device?

Any information is welcome

Marc

 

[ThomasZeGerman]

@ThomasZeGerman

Thanks a lot for sharing your experience with this adapter in order to perform IEEE 1588 hardware timestamping capabilities.

With your experience, does this Delock 66045 USB to ethernet adapter implement PTP (hardware timestamp)?

Which drivers are needed to build a linux kernel for this device?

Any information is welcome

Marc

Yes, the hardstamps work. You need to compile the driver yourself, you can download the source code from their website. Enable ptp hardstamps in the makefile.

Depending on the kernel you use, you might need some more tweaks, as I've shared.

Windows driver support will never come because, I paraphrase, windows sucks. Shouldn't be news to anyone, but still sad the driver support isn't enabled, on intel nics it works i think.

 

[marc.jofre]

Thanks @ThomasZeGerman !!!

So their cource code is from GitHub - mmoya/asix-usb-nic-linux-driver: Sources from https://www.asix.com.tw/en/support/download

I will try it!!!