Updated: 2022/Sep/29

Please read Privacy Policy. It's for your privacy.

VGE(4)                       Device Drivers Manual                      VGE(4)

NAME
     vge - VIA Networking Technologies VT6122 PCI Gigabit Ethernet adapter
     driver

SYNOPSIS
     vge* at pci? dev ? function ?

     Configuration of PHYs is also necessary.  See mii(4).

DESCRIPTION
     The vge driver provides support for various NICs and embedded Ethernet
     interfaces based on the VIA Networking Technologies VT6122 Gigabit
     Ethernet controller chips.

     The 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 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 up to 16K in size.  The VT6122 has a 16K receive FIFO and
     48K transmit FIFO.

     The vge driver takes advantage of the VT6122's checksum offload and VLAN
     tagging features, as well as the jumbo frame 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.  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.

     The vge driver also supports one special link option for 1000baseTX
     cards:

     link0      With 1000baseTX cards, establishing a link between two ports
                requires that one port be configured as a master and the other
                a slave.  With autonegotiation, the master/slave settings will
                be chosen automatically.  However when manually selecting the
                link state, it is necessary to force one side of the link to
                be a master and the other a slave.  The vge driver configures
                the ports as slaves by default.  Setting the link0 flag with
                ifconfig(8) will set a port as a master instead.

     For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

HARDWARE
     The vge driver supports VIA Networking VT3119 and VT6122 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)

DIAGNOSTICS
     vge%d: couldn't map memory  The driver failed to initialize PCI shared
     memory mapping.  This might happen if the card is not in a bus-master
     slot.

     vge%d: unable to map interrupt  A fatal initialization error has
     occurred.

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

SEE ALSO
     arp(4), ciphy(4), ipgphy(4), mii(4), netintro(4), ukphy(4), vlan(4),
     ifconfig(8)

HISTORY
     The vge device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.3 and then in
     NetBSD 3.0.

AUTHORS
     The vge driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@windriver.com>.  The
     NetBSD port was done by Jaromir Dolecek <jdolecek@NetBSD.org>.

BUGS
     VLAN packet filtering is done in software at the moment, though using
     hardware VLAN tagging.

NetBSD 10.99                     March 5, 2005                    NetBSD 10.99