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NAME

       ti — Alteon Networks Tigon I and Tigon II Gigabit Ethernet driver

SYNOPSIS

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

             device ti
             options TI_SF_BUF_JUMBO
             options TI_JUMBO_HDRSPLIT

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

             if_ti_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

       The  ti  driver  provides  support  for  PCI Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Alteon Networks Tigon
       Gigabit Ethernet controller chip.  The Tigon contains an  embedded  R4000  CPU,  gigabit  MAC,  dual  DMA
       channels  and  a PCI interface unit.  The Tigon II contains two R4000 CPUs and other refinements.  Either
       chip can be used in either a 32-bit or 64-bit PCI slot.  Communication with the chip is achieved via  PCI
       shared  memory and bus master DMA.  The Tigon I and II support hardware multicast address filtering, VLAN
       tag extraction and insertion, and jumbo Ethernet frames sizes up to 9000 bytes.  Note that  the  Tigon  I
       chipset is no longer in active production: all new adapters should come equipped with Tigon II chipsets.

       While  the  Tigon chipset supports 10, 100 and 1000Mbps speeds, support for 10 and 100Mbps speeds is only
       available on boards with the proper transceivers.  Most adapters are only designed to work  at  1000Mbps,
       however the driver should support those NICs that work at lower speeds as well.

       Support  for  jumbo  frames is provided 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.

       Header splitting support for Tigon 2 boards (this option has no effect for the Tigon 1) can be turned  on
       with  the TI_JUMBO_HDRSPLIT option.  See zero_copy(9) for more discussion on zero copy receive and header
       splitting.

       The ti driver uses UMA backed jumbo receive buffers, but can be  configured  to  use  sendfile(2)  buffer
       allocator.  To turn on sendfile(2) buffer allocator, use the TI_SF_BUF_JUMBO option.

       Support  for  vlans  is  also  available  using the vlan(4) mechanism.  See the vlan(4) man page for more
       details.

       The ti 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 the /etc/rc.conf file.

       10baseT/UTP           Set 10Mbps operation.  The mediaopt option  can  also  be  used  to  select  either
                             full-duplex or half-duplex modes.

       100baseTX             Set  100Mbps  (Fast  Ethernet)  operation.  The mediaopt option can also be used to
                             select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.

       1000baseSX            Set 1000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet) operation.  Only full-duplex mode is  supported  at
                             this speed.

       The ti 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 ti driver supports Gigabit Ethernet adapters based on the Alteon Tigon I and II chips.  The ti driver
       has been tested with the following adapters:

          3Com 3c985-SX Gigabit Ethernet adapter (Tigon 1)
          3Com 3c985B-SX Gigabit Ethernet adapter (Tigon 2)
          Alteon AceNIC V Gigabit Ethernet adapter (1000baseSX)
          Alteon AceNIC V Gigabit Ethernet adapter (1000baseT)
          Digital EtherWORKS 1000SX PCI Gigabit adapter
          Netgear GA620 Gigabit Ethernet adapter (1000baseSX)
          Netgear GA620T Gigabit Ethernet adapter (1000baseT)

       The following adapters should also be supported but have not yet been tested:

          Asante GigaNIX1000T Gigabit Ethernet adapter
          Asante PCI 1000BASE-SX Gigabit Ethernet adapter
          Farallon PN9000SX Gigabit Ethernet adapter
          NEC Gigabit Ethernet
          Silicon Graphics PCI Gigabit Ethernet adapter

LOADER TUNABLES

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

       hw.ti.%d.dac
               If  this  tunable  is  set to 0 it will disable DAC (Dual Address Cycle).  The default value is 1
               which means driver will use full 64bit DMA addressing.

SYSCTL VARIABLES

       The following variables are available as both sysctl(8) variables and loader(8) tunables.  The  interface
       has  to  be brought down and up again before a change takes effect when any of the following tunables are
       changed.  The one microsecond clock tick referenced below is a nominal time and the actual  hardware  may
       not  provide granularity to this level.  For example, on Tigon 2 (revision 6) cards with release 12.0 the
       clock granularity is 5 microseconds.

       dev.ti.%d.rx_coal_ticks
               This value, receive coalesced ticks, controls the number of clock ticks (of 1 microseconds  each)
               that  must  elapse  before  the  NIC  DMAs  the  receive  return producer pointer to the Host and
               generates an interrupt.  This parameter works in conjunction with  the  rx_max_coal_bds,  receive
               max coalesced BDs, tunable parameter.  The NIC will return the receive return producer pointer to
               the  Host  when  either of the thresholds is exceeded.  A value of 0 means that this parameter is
               ignored and receive BDs will only be returned  when  the  receive  max  coalesced  BDs  value  is
               reached.  The default value is 170.

       dev.ti.%d.rx_max_coal_bds
               This  value,  receive  max  coalesced BDs, controls the number of receive buffer descriptors that
               will be coalesced before the NIC updates the receive return ring producer index.  If  this  value
               is set to 0 it will disable receive buffer descriptor coalescing.  The default value is 64.

       dev.ti.%d.ti_tx_coal_ticks
               This  value,  send  coalesced  ticks, controls the number of clock ticks (of 1 microseconds each)
               that must elapse before the NIC DMAs the send consumer pointer  to  the  Host  and  generates  an
               interrupt.  This parameter works in conjunction with the tx_max_coal_bds, send max coalesced BDs,
               tunable  parameter.  The NIC will return the send consumer pointer to the Host when either of the
               thresholds is exceeded.  A value of 0 means that this parameter is ignored and send BDs will only
               be returned when the send max coalesced BDs value is reached.  The default value is 2000.

       dev.ti.%d.tx_max_coal_bds
               This value, send max coalesced BDs, controls the number of send buffer descriptors that  will  be
               coalesced  before  the  NIC  updates  the send consumer index.  If this value is set to 0 it will
               disable send buffer descriptor coalescing.  The default value is 32.

       dev.ti.%d.tx_buf_ratio
               This value controls the ratio of the remaining memory in  the  NIC  that  should  be  devoted  to
               transmit  buffer  vs.  receive buffer.  The lower 7 bits are used to indicate the ratio in 1/64th
               increments.  For example, setting this value to 16 will set the transmit buffer  to  1/4  of  the
               remaining  buffer space.  In no cases will the transmit or receive buffer be reduced below 68 KB.
               For a 1 MB NIC the approximate total space for data buffers is 800 KB.  For a  512  KB  NIC  that
               number is 300 KB.  The default value is 21.

       dev.ti.%d.stat_ticks
               The  value,  stat  ticks,  controls  the number of clock ticks (of 1 microseconds each) that must
               elapse before the NIC DMAs the statistics block to the Host and generates a STATS_UPDATED  event.
               If set to zero then statistics are never DMAed to the Host.  It is recommended that this value be
               set  to  a  high  enough  frequency to not mislead someone reading statistics refreshes.  Several
               times a second is enough.  The default value is 2000000 (2 seconds).

IOCTLS

       In addition to the standard socket(2) ioctl(2) calls implemented by most network drivers, the  ti  driver
       also includes a character device interface that can be used for additional diagnostics, configuration and
       debugging.  With this character device interface, and a specially patched version of gdb(1), the user can
       debug firmware running on the Tigon board.

       These ioctls and their arguments are defined in the <sys/tiio.h> header file.

       TIIOCGETSTATS     Return  card  statistics  DMAed  from the card into kernel memory approximately every 2
                         seconds.  (That time interval can  be  changed  via  the  TIIOCSETPARAMS  ioctl.)   The
                         argument is struct ti_stats.

       TIIOCGETPARAMS    Get  various performance-related firmware parameters that largely affect how interrupts
                         are coalesced.  The argument is struct ti_params.

       TIIOCSETPARAMS    Set various performance-related firmware parameters that largely affect how  interrupts
                         are coalesced.  The argument is struct ti_params.

       TIIOCSETTRACE     Tell   the  NIC  to  trace  the  requested  types  of  information.   The  argument  is
                         ti_trace_type.

       TIIOCGETTRACE     Dump the trace buffer from the card.  The argument is struct ti_trace_buf.

       ALT_ATTACH        This ioctl is used for compatibility with Alteon's  Solaris  driver.   They  apparently
                         only  have  one  character interface for debugging, so they have to tell it which Tigon
                         instance they want to debug.  This ioctl is a noop for FreeBSD.

       ALT_READ_TG_MEM   Read the requested memory region from the Tigon board.  The argument is struct tg_mem.

       ALT_WRITE_TG_MEM  Write to the requested memory region on  the  Tigon  board.   The  argument  is  struct
                         tg_mem.

       ALT_READ_TG_REG   Read the requested register from the Tigon board.  The argument is struct tg_reg.

       ALT_WRITE_TG_REG  Write to the requested register on the Tigon board.  The argument is struct tg_reg.

FILES

       /dev/ti[0-255]  Tigon driver character interface.

DIAGNOSTICS

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

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

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

       ti%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.

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

       ti%d: bios thinks we're in a 64 bit slot, but we aren't  The BIOS has programmed the NIC as though it had
       been installed in a 64-bit PCI slot, but in fact the NIC is in a 32-bit slot.  This happens as  a  result
       of  a  bug  in some BIOSes.  This can be worked around on the Tigon II, but on the Tigon I initialization
       will fail.

       ti%d: board self-diagnostics failed!  The ROMFAIL bit in the CPU state  register  was  set  after  system
       startup, indicating that the on-board NIC diagnostics failed.

       ti%d:  unknown  hwrev   The driver detected a board with an unsupported hardware revision.  The ti driver
       supports revision 4 (Tigon 1) and revision 6 (Tigon 2) chips and has firmware only for those devices.

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

SEE ALSO

       sendfile(2), altq(4), arp(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), vlan(4), ifconfig(8), zero_copy(9)

HISTORY

       The ti device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.

AUTHORS

       The  ti  driver  was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@bsdi.com>.  The header splitting firmware modifications,
       character ioctl(2) interface and debugging support  were  written  by  Kenneth  Merry  <ken@FreeBSD.org>.
       Initial zero copy support was written by Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@FreeBSD.org>.

Debian                                          November 14, 2011                                          TI(4)