VGE(4)                 FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual                 VGE(4)

NAME
     vge - VIA Networking Technologies Velocity Gigabit Ethernet adapter
     driver

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

           device miibus
           device vge

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

           if_vge_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION
     The vge driver provides support for various NICs and embedded Ethernet
     interfaces based on the VIA Technologies VT6120, VT6122, VT6130 and
     VT6132 Velocity Family Gigabit Ethernet controller chips.

     The VT6120/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 VT6130/VT6132 is the PCI express version of
     Velocity family.  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 (not on VT6130/VT6132) up to 16K in size.  The Velocity
     family controllers have a 16K receive FIFO and 48K transmit FIFO.

     The vge driver takes advantage of the controller's checksum offload and
     VLAN tagging features, as well as the jumbo frame (except VT6130/VT6132)
     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.  Jumbo frames are disabled on the VT6130/VT6132 controllers
     because the TX MAC will hang when trying to send a frame that is larger
     than 4K.  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.

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

HARDWARE
     The vge driver supports VIA Networking VT6120, VT6122, VT6130 and VT6132
     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)

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

     hw.vge.msi_disable
             This tunable disables MSI support on the Ethernet hardware.  The
             default value is 0.

SYSCTL VARIABLES
     The following variables are available as both sysctl(8) variables and
     loader(8) tunables:

     dev.vge.%d.int_holdoff
             Maximum number of time to delay interrupts.  The valid range is 0
             to 5100 in units of 1us, the default is 150 (150us).  The
             resolution of timer is about 20us so finer tuning than 20us
             wouldn't be available.  The interface should be brought down and
             up again before a change takes effect.

     dev.vge.%d.rx_coal_pkt
             Maximum number of packets to fire Rx completion interrupt.  The
             valid range is 1 to 255, the default is 64.

     dev.vge.%d.tx_coal_pkt
             Maximum number of packets to fire Tx completion interrupt.  The
             valid range is 1 to 255, the default is 128.

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

     vge%d: couldn't map ports  A fatal initialization error has occurred.

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

     vge%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.

     vge%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 vge device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.3.

AUTHORS
     The vge driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@windriver.com>.

FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6          May 29, 2011          FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE-p6