FreeBSD manual
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BGE(4) FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual BGE(4)
NAME
bge - Broadcom BCM57xx/BCM590x Gigabit/Fast Ethernet 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, 571x, 572x, 575x, 576x, 578x, 5776x and 5778x Gigabit Ethernet
controller chips and the 590x and 5779x Fast 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, BCM5704, BCM5714, BCM5717,
BCM5719, BCM5720, BCM5780 and BCM57765 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
The bge 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 bge driver provides support for various NICs based on the Broadcom
BCM570x family of Gigabit Ethernet controller chips, including the
following:
o 3Com 3c996-SX (1000baseSX)
o 3Com 3c996-T (10/100/1000baseTX)
o Apple Thunderbolt Display (10/100/1000baseTX)
o Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (10/100/1000baseTX)
o Dell PowerEdge 1750 integrated BCM5704C NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o Dell PowerEdge 2550 integrated BCM5700 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o Dell PowerEdge 2650 integrated BCM5703 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o Dell PowerEdge R200 integrated BCM5750 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o Dell PowerEdge R300 integrated BCM5722 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o IBM x235 server integrated BCM5703x NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o HP Compaq dc7600 integrated BCM5752 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o HP ProLiant NC7760 embedded Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o HP ProLiant NC7770 PCI-X Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o HP ProLiant NC7771 PCI-X Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o HP ProLiant NC7781 embedded PCI-X Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
o Netgear GA302T (10/100/1000baseTX)
o SysKonnect SK-9D21 (10/100/1000baseTX)
o SysKonnect SK-9D41 (1000baseSX)
LOADER TUNABLES
The following tunables 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. Enabled by
default.
dev.bge.%d.msi
Non-zero value enables MSI support on the Ethernet hardware. The
default value is 1.
SYSCTL VARIABLES
The following variables are available as both sysctl(8) variables and
loader(8) tunables:
dev.bge.%d.forced_collapse
Allow collapsing multiple transmit buffers into a single buffer
to increase transmit performance with the cost of CPU cycles.
The default value is 0 to disable transmit buffer collapsing.
dev.bge.%d.forced_udpcsum
Enable UDP transmit checksum offloading even if controller can
generate UDP datagrams with checksum value 0. UDP datagrams with
checksum value 0 can confuse receiver host as it means sender did
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: firmware handshake timed out, found 0xffffffff The device was
physically disconnected from the system, or there is a problem with the
device causing it to stop responding to the host it is attached to.
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>.
BUGS
Hotplug is not currently supported in FreeBSD, hence, Thunderbolt
interfaces need to be connected prior to system power up on Apple systems
in order for the interface to be detected. Also, due to the lack of
hotplug support, Thunderbolt-based interfaces must not be removed while
the system is up as the kernel is currently unable to cope with a bge
interface disappearing.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 August 18, 2017 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11