NAME

     nge — National Semiconductor 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 nge

     Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in
     loader.conf(5):

           if_nge_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

     The nge driver provides support for various NICs based on the National Semiconductor DP83820
     and DP83821 Gigabit Ethernet controller chips.

     The DP83820 supports TBI (ten bit interface) and GMII transceivers, which means it can be
     used with either copper or 1000baseX fiber applications.  The DP83820 supports TCP/IP
     checksum offload and VLAN tagging/insertion as well as a 2048-bit multicast hash filter and
     up to 4 pattern match buffers.

     Most cards also use the DP83861 10/100/1000 copper gigabit transceiver chip, which supports
     autonegotiation of 10, 100 and 1000Mbps modes in full or half duplex.

     The DP83820 and DP83821 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 nge 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.  full-duplex and half-duplex modes
                  are supported.

     1000baseSX   Set 1000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet) operation.  Both full-duplex and half-duplex
                  modes are supported.

     The nge 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).

HARDWARE

     The nge driver supports National Semiconductor DP83820 and DP83821 based Gigabit Ethernet
     adapters including:

     •   Addtron AEG320T
     •   Ark PC SOHO-GA2500T (32-bit PCI) and SOHO-GA2000T (64-bit PCI)
     •   Asante FriendlyNet GigaNIX 1000TA and 1000TPC
     •   D-Link DGE-500T
     •   Linksys EG1032, revision 1
     •   Netgear GA621
     •   Netgear GA622T
     •   SMC EZ Card 1000 (SMC9462TX)
     •   Surecom Technology EP-320G-TX
     •   Trendware TEG-PCITX (32-bit PCI) and TEG-PCITX2 (64-bit PCI)

SYSCTL VARIABLES

     The following variables are available as both sysctl(8) variables and loader(8) tunables:

     dev.nge.%d.int_holdoff
             Maximum amount of time to delay interrupt processing in units of 100us.  The
             accepted range is 0 to 255, the default is 1(100us).  Value 0 completely disables
             the interrupt moderation.  The interface has to be brought down and up again before
             a change takes effect.

DIAGNOSTICS

     nge%d: couldn't map memory  A fatal initialization error has occurred.

     nge%d: couldn't map ports  A fatal initialization error has occurred.

     nge%d: couldn't map interrupt  A fatal initialization error has occurred.

     nge%d: no memory for softc struct!  The driver failed to allocate memory for per-device
     instance information during initialization.

     nge%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.

     nge%d: no memory for jumbo buffers!  The driver failed to allocate memory for jumbo frames
     during initialization.

     nge%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)

     National Semiconductor DP83820 datasheet, http://www.national.com.

     National Semiconductor DP83861 datasheet, http://www.national.com.

HISTORY

     The nge device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 4.4.

AUTHORS

     The nge driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@bsdi.com>.