Call for testers: rl(4) optimized for 8139C+

From: Bill Paul (wpaul_at_FreeBSD.ORG)
Date: 07/05/03

  • Next message: Notifier Fort Wayne 3: "MMS Notification irving 1" 
    To: hackers@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org
Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2003 17:18:13 -0700 (PDT)

    Somehow I doubt I'm going to get a lot of responses to this, since I'm
    not sure how many people besides me actually have an 8139C+ NIC. That
    said, if you have one, and you're running FreeBSD 5.1 or later, please
    try the driver code at:

            http://www.freebsd.org/~wpaul/RealTek/cplus

    If you actually have a C+ card, it will show up like this:

    rl0: <RealTek 8139 10/100BaseTX (C+)> port 0xc000-0xc0ff mem 0xdc001000-0xdc0010ff irq 11 at device 13.0 on pci0
    rl0: Ethernet address: 00:e0:4c:00:00:1b
    miibus5: <MII bus> on rl0
    rlphy0: <RealTek internal media interface> on miibus5
    rlphy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, auto

    Also, ifconfig rl0 will show this:

    rl0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
            options=1b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING>

    The 8139C+ uses real descriptor-based DMA and actually exhibits
    pretty good performance. (With my Athlon 900Mhz test machine, I can
    achieve 143000 frames/sec raw transmit speed.) This driver supports
    the following features:

    - RX and TX descriptor lists
    - RX and TX TCP/IP checksum offload
    - RX and TX hardware vlan tagging
    - TX interrupt moderation (using the 8139C+'s on-board timer)

    The chip supports TCP large send, but there's no driver support for
    that because there's no way to exploit it in FreeBSD. The chip also
    supports two TX DMA queues (normal and high priority), but the
    driver only takes advantage of one.

    If you have a -current system, please compile this code with
    -DNEW_BUSDMA_API (this enables the use of the two new arguments
    to the bus_dma_tag_create() function which appeared a couple of
    days ago).

    I'm mostly looking for performance reports and success/failure
    reports concerning VLANs. (I don't have an easy way to test the
    VLAN support at home. I think I did everything right, but I
    want to be sure before I commit to the tree.)

    There is preliminary support for the 8169 gigE chip, but I don't
    have a card to test with, so don't expect RealTek gigE NICs to work yet.

    Lastly, I'm also interested to see just what NICs are out there that
    use the 8139C+. The only way to spot the presence of such a chip raw transmit speed.) This driver supports
    the following features:

    - RX and TX descriptor lists
    - RX and TX TCP/IP checksum offload
    - RX and TX hardware vlan tagging
    - TX interrupt moderation (using the 8139C+'s on-board timer)

    The chip supports TCP large send, but there's no driver support for
    that because there's no way to exploit it in FreeBSD. The chip also
    supports two TX DMA queues (normal and high priority), but the
    driver only takes advantage of one.

    If you have a -current system, please compile this code with
    -DNEW_BUSDMA_API (this enables the use of the two new arguments
    to the bus_dma_tag_create() function which appeared a couple of
    days ago).

    I'm mostly looking for performance reports and success/failure
    reports concerning VLANs. (I don't have an easy way to test the
    VLAN support at home. I think I did everything right, but I
    want to be sure before I commit to the tree.)

    There is preliminary support for the 8169 gigE chip, but I don't
    have a card to test with, so don't expect RealTek gigE NICs to work yet.

    Lastly, I'm also interested to see just what NICs are out there that
    use the 8139C+. The only way to tell if you have the chip is to check
    the part number on it. (It should in fact say 8139C+.) I hope RealTek
    has actually sold this chip well, because it actually seems to perform
    really well.

    -Bill 

    --
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul            (510) 749-2329 | Senior Engineer, Master of Unix-Fu
                 wpaul@windriver.com | Wind River Systems
=============================================================================
      "If stupidity were a handicap, you'd have the best parking spot."
=============================================================================
_______________________________________________
freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-hackers
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-hackers-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"
  • Next message: Notifier Fort Wayne 3: "MMS Notification irving 1"

    Relevant Pages