Ubuntu Manpage: bge — Broadcom BCM57xx/BCM590x Gigabit/Fast Ethernet driver

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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 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 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:

       •   3Com 3c996-SX (1000baseSX)
       •   3Com 3c996-T (10/100/1000baseTX)
       •   Apple Thunderbolt Display (10/100/1000baseTX)
       •   Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (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)
       •   Dell PowerEdge R200 integrated BCM5750 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)
       •   Dell PowerEdge R300 integrated BCM5722 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 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 not compute UDP checksum.  The default value is 0 which disables UDP transmit checksum
               offloading.  The interface need to be brought down and up again before a change takes effect.

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: 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).

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.

Debian                                           August 18, 2017                                          BGE(4)