Ubuntu Manpage: vge — VIA Networking Technologies Velocity Gigabit Ethernet adapter driver

Provided by: freebsd-manpages_10.1~RC1-1_all

NAME

     vge — VIA Networking Technologies Velocity Gigabit Ethernet adapter driver

SYNOPSIS

     To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel
     configuration file:

           device miibus
           device vge

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

           if_vge_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The vge driver provides support for various NICs and embedded Ethernet interfaces based on
the VIA Technologies VT6120, VT6122, VT6130 and VT6132 Velocity Family Gigabit Ethernet
controller chips.

The VT6120/VT6122 is a 33/66MHz 64-bit PCI device which combines a tri-speed MAC with an
integrated 10/100/1000 copper PHY. (Some older cards use an external PHY.) The
VT6130/VT6132 is the PCI express version of Velocity family. The MAC supports TCP/IP
hardware checksums (IPv4 only), TCP large send, VLAN tag insertion and stripping, as well as
VLAN filtering, a 64-entry CAM filter and a 64-entry VLAN filter, 64-bit multicast hash
filter, 4 separate transmit DMA queues, flow control and jumbo frames (not on VT6130/VT6132)
up to 16K in size. The Velocity family controllers have a 16K receive FIFO and 48K transmit
FIFO.

The vge driver takes advantage of the controller's checksum offload and VLAN tagging
features, as well as the jumbo frame (except VT6130/VT6132) and CAM filter support. The CAM
filter is used for multicast address filtering to provide 64 perfect multicast address
filter support. If it is necessary for the interface to join more than 64 multicast groups,
the driver will switch over to using the hash filter.

The jumbo frame support can be enabled by setting the interface MTU to any value larger than
the default of 1500 bytes, up to a maximum of 9000 bytes. Jumbo frames are disabled on the
VT6130/VT6132 controllers because the TX MAC will hang when trying to send a frame that is
larger than 4K. The receive and transmit checksum offload support can be toggled on and off
using the ifconfig(8) utility.

The vge 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 ifconfig(8) mediaopt option
can also be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.

The vge 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 vge driver supports VIA Networking VT6120, VT6122, VT6130 and VT6132 based Gigabit
     Ethernet adapters including:

     •   VIA Networking LAN-on-motherboard Gigabit Ethernet
     •   ZyXEL GN650-T 64-bit PCI Gigabit Ethernet NIC (ZX1701)
     •   ZyXEL GN670-T 32-bit PCI Gigabit Ethernet NIC (ZX1702)

LOADER TUNABLES

     Tunables can be set at the loader(8) prompt before booting the kernel or stored in
     loader.conf(5).

     hw.vge.msi_disable
             This tunable disables MSI support on the Ethernet hardware.  The default value is 0.

SYSCTL VARIABLES

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

     dev.vge.%d.int_holdoff
             Maximum number of time to delay interrupts.  The valid range is 0 to 5100 in units
             of 1us, the default is 150 (150us).  The resolution of timer is about 20us so finer
             tuning than 20us wouldn't be available.  The interface should be brought down and up
             again before a change takes effect.

     dev.vge.%d.rx_coal_pkt
             Maximum number of packets to fire Rx completion interrupt.  The valid range is 1 to
             255, the default is 64.

     dev.vge.%d.tx_coal_pkt
             Maximum number of packets to fire Tx completion interrupt.  The valid range is 1 to
             255, the default is 128.

DIAGNOSTICS

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

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

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

     vge%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.

     vge%d: watchdog timeout  The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a
     problem with the network connection (cable).

HISTORY

     The vge device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.3.

AUTHORS

     The vge driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@windriver.com>.