NAME
bge - Broadcom BCM570x/5714/5721/5722/5750/5751/5752/5789 PCI Gigabit
Ethernet adapter driver
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your
kernel configuration file:
device miibus
device bge
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the
following line in loader.conf(5):
if_bge_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
The bge driver provides support for various NICs based on the Broadcom
BCM570x, 5714, 5721, 5722, 5750, 5751, 5752 and 5789 families of Gigabit
Ethernet controller chips.
All of these NICs are capable of 10, 100 and 1000Mbps speeds over CAT5
copper cable, except for the SysKonnect SK-9D41 which supports only
1000Mbps over multimode fiber. The BCM570x builds upon the technology of
the Alteon Tigon II. It has two R4000 CPU cores and is PCI v2.2 and PCI-
X v1.0 compliant. It supports IP, TCP and UDP checksum offload for both
receive and transmit, multiple RX and TX DMA rings for QoS applications,
rules-based receive filtering, and VLAN tag stripping/insertion as well
as a 256-bit multicast hash filter. Additional features may be provided
via value-add firmware updates. The BCM570x supports TBI (ten bit
interface) and GMII transceivers, which means it can be used with either
copper or 1000baseX fiber applications. Note however the device only
supports a single speed in TBI mode.
Most BCM5700-based cards also use the Broadcom BCM5401 or BCM5411
10/100/1000 copper gigabit transceivers, which support autonegotiation of
10, 100 and 1000Mbps modes in full or half duplex.
The BCM5700, BCM5701, BCM5702, BCM5703 and BCM5704 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. Using jumbo frames can
greatly improve performance for certain tasks, such as file transfers and
data streaming.
The bge 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. Only
full-duplex mode is supported.
1000baseSX Set 1000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet) operation. Both full-duplex
and half-duplex modes are supported.
The bge driver supports the following media options:
full-duplex Force full duplex operation.
half-duplex Force half duplex operation.
The bge driver also supports one special link option for 1000baseTX
cards:
link0 With 1000baseTX cards, establishing a link between two ports
requires that one port be configured as a master and the other a
slave. With autonegotiation, the master/slave settings will be
chosen automatically. However when manually selecting the link
state, it is necessary to force one side of the link to be a
master and the other a slave. The bge driver configures the ports
as slaves by default. Setting the link0 flag with ifconfig(8)
will set a port as a master instead.
For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).
HARDWARE
The bge driver provides support for various NICs based on the Broadcom
BCM570x family of Gigabit Ethernet controller chips, including the
following:
· 3Com 3c996-SX (1000baseSX)
· 3Com 3c996-T (10/100/1000baseTX)
· Dell PowerEdge 1750 integrated BCM5704C NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· Dell PowerEdge 2550 integrated BCM5700 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· Dell PowerEdge 2650 integrated BCM5703 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· Dell PowerEdge R200 integrated BCM5750 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· Dell PowerEdge R300 integrated BCM5722 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· IBM x235 server integrated BCM5703x NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· HP Compaq dc7600 integrated BCM5752 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· HP ProLiant NC7760 embedded Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· HP ProLiant NC7770 PCI-X Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· HP ProLiant NC7771 PCI-X Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· HP ProLiant NC7781 embedded PCI-X Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
· Netgear GA302T (10/100/1000baseTX)
· SysKonnect SK-9D21 (10/100/1000baseTX)
· SysKonnect SK-9D41 (1000baseSX)
LOADER TUNABLES
The following tunable can be set at the loader(8) prompt before booting
the kernel, or stored in loader.conf(5).
hw.bge.allow_asf
Allow the ASF feature for cooperating with IPMI. Can cause
system lockup problems on a small number of systems. Disabled by
default.
DIAGNOSTICS
bge%d: couldn’t map memory A fatal initialization error has occurred.
bge%d: couldn’t map ports A fatal initialization error has occurred.
bge%d: couldn’t map interrupt A fatal initialization error has occurred.
bge%d: no memory for softc struct! The driver failed to allocate memory
for per-device instance information during initialization.
bge%d: failed to enable memory mapping! The driver failed to initialize
PCI shared memory mapping. This might happen if the card is not in a
bus-master slot.
bge%d: no memory for jumbo buffers! The driver failed to allocate memory
for jumbo frames during initialization.
bge%d: watchdog timeout The device has stopped responding to the
network, or there is a problem with the network connection (cable).
SEE ALSO
altq(4), arp(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), polling(4),
vlan(4), ifconfig(8)
HISTORY
The bge device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 4.5.
AUTHORS
The bge driver was written by Bill Paul 〈wpaul@windriver.com〉.