To compile this driver into the kernel,
place the following lines in your
kernel configuration file:
device miibusdevice bge
Alternatively, to load the driver as a
module at boot time, place the following line in
loader.conf5:
if_bge_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
The
driver provides support for various NICs based on the Broadcom BCM570x,
5714, 5721, 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, BCM5703, BCM5704, BCM5714 and BCM5780 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
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.conf5.
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
driver supports the following media options:
full-duplex
Force full duplex operation.
half-duplex
Force half duplex operation.
The
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
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
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)
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.conf5.
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).
