re
—
RealTek 8139C+/8169/816xS/811xS/8168/810xE/8111 PCI/PCIe
Ethernet adapter driver
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel
configuration file:
device miibus
device re
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place
the following line in
loader.conf(5):
The re
driver provides support for various NICs based on
the RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL816xS, RTL811xS, RTL8168, RTL810xE and
RTL8111 PCI and PCIe Ethernet controllers.
NICs based on the 8139C+ and 810xE are capable of 10 and 100Mbps
speeds over CAT5 cable. NICs based on the 8169, 816xS, 811xS, 8168 and 8111
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. The 8169 is a 10/100/1000 MAC only, requiring a GMII or TBI
external PHY. The 816xS, 811xS, 8168 and 8111 are single-chip devices
containing both a 10/100/1000 MAC and 10/100/1000 copper PHY. 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. The MTU is limited to 7422, since
the chip cannot transmit larger frames. 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).
The re
driver supports RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169,
RTL816xS, RTL811xS, RTL8168, RTL810xE and RTL8111 based Fast Ethernet and
Gigabit Ethernet adapters including:
- Alloy Computer Products EtherGOLD 1439E 10/100 (8139C+)
- Compaq Evo N1015v Integrated Ethernet (8139C+)
- Corega CG-LAPCIGT Gigabit Ethernet (8169S)
- D-Link DGE-528(T) Gigabit Ethernet (8169S)
- Gigabyte 7N400 Pro2 Integrated Gigabit Ethernet (8110S)
- LevelOne GNC-0105T (8169S)
- LinkSys EG1032 (32-bit PCI)
- PLANEX COMMUNICATIONS Inc. GN-1200TC (8169S)
- TP-Link TG-3468 v2 Gigabit Ethernet (8168)
- USRobotics USR997902 Gigabit Ethernet (8169S)
- Xterasys XN-152 10/100/1000 NIC (8169)
Tunables can be set at the
loader(8)
prompt before booting the kernel or stored in
loader.conf(5).
- hw.re.intr_filter
- This tunable makes driver use interrupt filter handler on controllers that
support MSI/MSI-X capability. If MSI/MSI-X is disabled by administrator
this tunable has no effect and driver will use interrupt filter handler.
The default value is 0 to use interrupt thread handler.
- hw.re.msi_disable
- This tunable disables MSI support on the Ethernet hardware. The default
value is 0.
- hw.re.msix_disable
- This tunable disables MSI-X support on the Ethernet hardware. The default
value is 0.
- hw.re.prefer_iomap
- This tunable controls which register mapping should be used on the
specified device. A non-zero value enables I/O space register mapping. The
default value is 0 to use memory space register mapping.
The following variables are available as both
sysctl(8)
variables and
loader(8)
tunables:
- dev.re.%d.int_rx_mod
- Maximum amount of time to delay receive interrupt processing in units of
1us. The accepted range is 0 to 65, the default is 65(65us). Value 0
completely disables the interrupt moderation. The interface need to be
brought down and up again before a change takes effect.
- re%d: couldn't map memory
- A fatal initialization error has occurred.
- re%d: couldn't map ports
- A fatal initialization error has occurred.
- re%d: couldn't map interrupt
- A fatal initialization error has occurred.
- re%d: no memory for softc struct!
- The driver failed to allocate memory for per-device instance information
during initialization.
- re%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.
- re%d: no memory for jumbo buffers!
- The driver failed to allocate memory for jumbo frames during
initialization.
- re%d: watchdog timeout
- The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem
with the network connection (cable).
altq(4),
arp(4),
miibus(4),
netintro(4),
ng_ether(4),
polling(4),
rgephy(4),
vlan(4),
ifconfig(8)
RealTek Semiconductor
RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL8169S and RTL8110S datasheets,
http://www.realtek.com.tw/.
The re
device driver first appeared in
FreeBSD 5.2.
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.