NAME
re
- RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S PCI Ethernet adapter driver
SYNOPSIS
re* at pci? dev ? function ?
re* at cardbus? function ?
DESCRIPTION
The
re
driver provides support for various NICs based on the RealTek RTL8139C+,
RTL8169, RTL8169S, and RTL8110S PCI/Cardbus Ethernet controllers, including
the following:
-
Alloy Computer Products EtherGOLD 1439E 10/100 (8139C+)
-
Compaq Evo N1015v Integrated Ethernet (8139C+)
-
Gigabyte 7N400 Pro2 Integrated Gigabit Ethernet (8110S)
-
NETGEAR GA311 (8169S)
-
PLANEX COMMUNICATIONS Inc. GN-1200TC (8169S)
-
Xterasys XN-152 10/100/1000 NIC (8169)
-
Corega CG-LAPCIGT Gigabit Ethernet (8169S)
-
D-Link DGE-528T Gigabit Ethernet (8169S)
-
US Robotics (3Com) USR997902 Gigabit Ethernet (8169S)
-
Linksys EG1032 rev. 3 Gigabit Ethernet (8169S)
NICs based on the 8139C+ are capable of 10 and 100Mbps speeds over
CAT5 cable.
NICs based on the 8169, 8169S, and 8110S are capable of 10, 100, and
1000Mbps operation.
All NICs supported by the
re
driver have TCP/IP checksum offload and hardware VLAN tagging/insertion
features, and use a descriptor-based DMA mechanism.
They are also capable of TCP large send (TCP segmentation offload).
The 8139C+ is a single-chip solution combining both a 10/100 MAC and PHY,
and its PHY is supported by
rlphy(4).
The 8169 is a 10/100/1000 MAC only, requiring a GMII or TBI external PHY
and some 8169 based boards have Marvell 88E1000 PHY supported by
makphy(4).
The 8169S and 8110S are single-chip devices containing both a 10/100/1000
MAC and 10/100/1000 copper PHY, which is supported by
rgephy(4).
Standalone 10/100/1000 cards are available in both 32-bit PCI and
64-bit PCI models.
The 8110S is designed for embedded LAN-on-motherboard applications.
The 8169, 8169S, and 8110S also support jumbo frames, which can be
configured via the interface MTU setting.
Selecting an MTU larger than 1500 bytes with the
ifconfig(8)
utility configures the adapter to receive and transmit jumbo frames.
The
re
driver supports the following media types:
- autoselect
-
Enable autoselection of the media type and options.
The user can manually override
the autoselected mode by adding media options to
rc.conf(5).
- 10baseT/UTP
-
Set 10Mbps operation.
The
ifconfig(8)
mediaopt
option can also be used to select either
full-duplex
or
half-duplex
modes.
- 100baseTX
-
Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation.
The
ifconfig(8)
mediaopt
option can also be used to select either
full-duplex
or
half-duplex
modes.
- 1000baseTX
-
Set 1000baseTX operation over twisted pair.
The RealTek GigE chips support 1000Mbps in
full-duplex
mode only.
The
re
driver supports the following media options:
- full-duplex
-
Force full duplex operation.
- half-duplex
-
Force half duplex operation.
For more information on configuring this device, see
ifconfig(8).
DIAGNOSTICS
- re%d: can't map i/o space
-
A fatal initialization error has occurred.
- re%d: can't map mem space
-
A fatal initialization error has occurred.
- re%d: couldn't map interrupt
-
A fatal initialization error has occurred.
- re%d: watchdog timeout
-
The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with
the network connection (cable).
SEE ALSO
arp(4),
cardbus(4),
mii(4),
netintro(4),
pci(4),
rgephy(4),
rlphy(4),
ifconfig(8)
HISTORY
The
re
device driver first appeared in
FreeBSD5.2
and was ported to
NetBSD2.0.
AUTHORS
The
re
driver was written by
Bill Paul <wpaul@windriver.com>
.
BUGS
The Xterasys XN-152 32-bit PCI NIC, which uses the RTL8169 MAC and
Marvell 88E1000 PHY, has a defect that causes DMA corruption
if the board is plugged into a 64-bit PCI slot.
The defect lies in the board design, not the chip itself: the PCI
REQ64# and ACK64# lines should be pulled high, but they are not.
The result is that the 8169 chip is tricked into performing 64-bit
DMA transfers even though a 64-bit data path between the NIC and
the bus does not actually exist.
Unfortunately, it is not possible to correct this problem in software,
however it is possible to detect it.
When the
re
driver is loaded, it will run a diagnostic routine designed to
validate DMA operation by placing the chip in digital loopback mode
and initiating a packet transmission.
If the card functions properly, the transmitted data will
be echoed back unmodified.
If the echoed data is corrupt, the driver
will print an error message on the console and abort the device attach.
The user should ensure the NIC is installed in a 32-bit PCI slot to
avoid this problem.
The RealTek 8169, 8169S, and 8110S chips appear to only be capable of
transmitting jumbo frames up to 7.5K in size.