Tribblix: manual page: nxge.4d

NXGE(4D) Devices NXGE(4D)

NAME

nxge - Sun 10/1 Gigabit Ethernet network driver

SYNOPSIS

/dev/nxge*

DESCRIPTION

The nxge Gigabit Ethernet driver is a multi-threaded, loadable,
clonable, GLD-based STREAMS driver supporting the Data Link Provider
Interface, dlpi(4P), on Sun Gigabit Ethernet hardware (NIU, Sun x8,
Express Dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet fiber XFP low profile adapter and
the 10/100/1000BASE-T x8 Express low profile adapter).

The nxge driver functions include chip initialization, frame transmit
and receive, flow classification, multicast and promiscuous support,
and error recovery and reporting.

The nxge device provides fully-compliant IEEE 802.3ae 10Gb/s full
duplex operation using XFP-based 10GigE optics (NIU, dual 10 Gigabit
fiber XFP adapter). The Sun Ethernet hardware supports the IEEE
802.3x frame-based flow control capabilities.

For the 10/100/1000BASE-T adapter, the nxge driver and hardware
support auto-negotiation, a protocol specified by the 1000 Base-T
standard. Auto-negotiation allows each device to advertise its
capabilities and discover those of its peer (link partner). The
highest common denominator supported by both link partners is
automatically selected, yielding the greatest available throughput
while requiring no manual configuration. The nxge driver also allows
you to configure the advertised capabilities to less than the maximum
(where the full speed of the interface is not required) or to force a
specific mode of operation, irrespective of the link partner's
advertised capabilities.

APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE

The cloning character-special device, /dev/nxge, is used to access
all Sun Neptune NIU devices installed within the system.

The nxge driver is managed by the dladm(8) command line utility,
which allows VLANs to be defined on top of nxge instances and for
nxge instances to be aggregated. See dladm(8) for more details.

You must send an explicit DL_ATTACH_REQ message to associate the
opened stream with a particular device (PPA). The PPA ID is
interpreted as an unsigned integer data type and indicates the
corresponding device instance (unit) number. The driver returns an
error (DL_ERROR_ACK) if the PPA field value does not correspond to a
valid device instance number for the system. The device is
initialized on first attach and de-initialized (stopped) at last
detach.

The values returned by the driver in the DL_INFO_ACK primitive in
response to a DL_INFO_REQ are:

o Maximum SDU (default 1500).

o Minimum SDU (default 0). The driver pads to the mandatory
60-octet minimum packet size.

o DLSAP address length is 8.

o MAC type is DL_ETHER.

o SAP length value is -2, meaning the physical address
component is followed immediately by a 2-byte SAP
component within the DLSAP address.

o Broadcast address value is the Ethernet/IEEE broadcast
address (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF).

Due to the nature of link address definition for IPoIB,
the DL_SET_PHYS_ADDR_REQ DLPI primitive is not supported.

In the transmit case for streams that have been put in raw
mode via the DLIOCRAW ioctl, the dlpi application must
prepend the 20 byte IPoIB destination address to the data
it wants to transmit over-the-wire. In the receive case,
applications receive the IP/ARP datagram along with the
IETF defined 4 byte header.

Once in the DL_ATTACHED state, you must send a DL_BIND_REQ to
associate a particular Service Access Point (SAP) with the stream.

CONFIGURATION

For the 10/100/1000BASE-T adapter, the nxge driver performs auto-
negotiation to select the link speed and mode. Link speed and mode
may be 10000 Mbps full-duplex (10 Gigabit adapter), 1000 Mbps full-
duplex, 100 Mbps full-duplex, or 10 Mbps full-duplex, depending on
the hardware adapter type. See the IEEE802.3 standard for more
information.

The auto-negotiation protocol automatically selects the 1000 Mbps,
100 Mbps, or 10 Mbps operation modes (full-duplex only) as the
highest common denominator supported by both link partners. Because
the nxge device supports all modes, the effect is to select the
highest throughput mode supported by the other device.

You can also set the capabilities advertised by the nxge device using
dladm(8). The driver supports a number of parameters whose names
begin with en_ (see below). Each of these parameters contains a
boolean value that determines if the device advertises that mode of
operation. The adv_autoneg_cap parameter controls whether auto-
negotiation is performed. If adv_autoneg_cap is set to 0, the
driver forces the mode of operation selected by the first non-zero
parameter in priority order as shown below:

(highest priority/greatest throughput)
en_1000fdx_cap 1000Mbps full duplex
en_100fdx_cap 100Mbps full duplex
en_10fdx_cap 10Mbps full duplex
(lowest priority/least throughput)

All capabilities default to enabled. Note that changing any
capability parameter causes the link to go down while the link
partners renegotiate the link speed/duplex using the newly changed
capabilities.

FILES

/dev/nxge*
Special character device.

/kernel/drv/nxge
32-bit device driver (x86).

/kernel/drv/sparcv9/nxge
64-bit device driver (SPARC).

/kernel/drv/amd64/nxge
64-bit device driver (x86).

/kernel/drv/nxge.conf
Configuration file.

ATTRIBUTES