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<table class="head">
<tr>
<td class="head-ltitle">BGE(4)</td>
<td class="head-vol">Device Drivers Manual</td>
<td class="head-rtitle">BGE(4)</td>
</tr>
</table>
<div class="manual-text">
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="NAME"><a class="permalink" href="#NAME">NAME</a></h1>
<p class="Pp"><code class="Nm">bge</code> — <span class="Nd">Broadcom
BCM57xx/BCM590x Gigabit/Fast Ethernet driver</span></p>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="SYNOPSIS"><a class="permalink" href="#SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS</a></h1>
<p class="Pp">To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines
in your kernel configuration file:</p>
<div class="Bd Pp Bd-indent"><code class="Cd">device miibus</code>
<br/>
<code class="Cd">device bge</code></div>
<p class="Pp">Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place
the following line in <a class="Xr">loader.conf(5)</a>:</p>
<div class="Bd Pp Bd-indent Li">
<pre>if_bge_load="YES"</pre>
</div>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="DESCRIPTION"><a class="permalink" href="#DESCRIPTION">DESCRIPTION</a></h1>
<p class="Pp">The <code class="Nm">bge</code> driver provides support for
various NICs based on the Broadcom BCM570x, 571x, 572x, 575x, 576x, 578x,
5776x and 5778x Gigabit Ethernet controller chips and the 590x and 5779x
Fast Ethernet controller chips.</p>
<p class="Pp">All of these NICs are capable of 10, 100 and 1000Mbps speeds over
CAT5 copper cable, except for the SysKonnect SK-9D41 which supports only
1000Mbps over multimode fiber. The BCM570x builds upon the technology of the
Alteon Tigon II. It has two R4000 CPU cores and is PCI v2.2 and PCI-X v1.0
compliant. It supports IP, TCP and UDP checksum offload for both receive and
transmit, multiple RX and TX DMA rings for QoS applications, rules-based
receive filtering, and VLAN tag stripping/insertion as well as a 256-bit
multicast hash filter. Additional features may be provided via value-add
firmware updates. The BCM570x supports TBI (ten bit interface) and GMII
transceivers, which means it can be used with either copper or 1000baseX
fiber applications. Note however the device only supports a single speed in
TBI mode.</p>
<p class="Pp">Most BCM5700-based cards also use the Broadcom BCM5401 or BCM5411
10/100/1000 copper gigabit transceivers, which support autonegotiation of
10, 100 and 1000Mbps modes in full or half duplex.</p>
<p class="Pp">The BCM5700, BCM5701, BCM5702, BCM5703, BCM5704, BCM5714, BCM5717,
BCM5719, BCM5720, BCM5780 and BCM57765 also support jumbo frames, which can
be configured via the interface MTU setting. Selecting an MTU larger than
1500 bytes with the <a class="Xr">ifconfig(8)</a> 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.</p>
<p class="Pp">The <code class="Nm">bge</code> driver supports the following
media types:</p>
<dl class="Bl-tag">
<dt id="autoselect"><a class="permalink" href="#autoselect"><code class="Cm">autoselect</code></a></dt>
<dd>Enable autoselection of the media type and options. The user can manually
override the autoselected mode by adding media options to
<a class="Xr">rc.conf(5)</a>.</dd>
<dt id="10baseT/UTP"><a class="permalink" href="#10baseT/UTP"><code class="Cm">10baseT/UTP</code></a></dt>
<dd>Set 10Mbps operation. The <a class="Xr">ifconfig(8)</a>
<code class="Ic">mediaopt</code> option can also be used to select either
<code class="Cm">full-duplex</code> or <code class="Cm">half-duplex</code>
modes.</dd>
<dt id="100baseTX"><a class="permalink" href="#100baseTX"><code class="Cm">100baseTX</code></a></dt>
<dd>Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation. The <a class="Xr">ifconfig(8)</a>
<code class="Ic">mediaopt</code> option can also be used to select either
<code class="Cm">full-duplex</code> or <code class="Cm">half-duplex</code>
modes.</dd>
<dt id="1000baseTX"><a class="permalink" href="#1000baseTX"><code class="Cm">1000baseTX</code></a></dt>
<dd>Set 1000baseTX operation over twisted pair. Only
<code class="Cm">full-duplex</code> mode is supported.</dd>
<dt id="1000baseSX"><a class="permalink" href="#1000baseSX"><code class="Cm">1000baseSX</code></a></dt>
<dd>Set 1000Mbps (Gigabit Ethernet) operation. Both
<code class="Cm">full-duplex</code> and
<code class="Cm">half-duplex</code> modes are supported.</dd>
</dl>
<p class="Pp">The <code class="Nm">bge</code> driver supports the following
media options:</p>
<dl class="Bl-tag">
<dt id="full-duplex"><a class="permalink" href="#full-duplex"><code class="Cm">full-duplex</code></a></dt>
<dd>Force full duplex operation.</dd>
<dt id="half-duplex"><a class="permalink" href="#half-duplex"><code class="Cm">half-duplex</code></a></dt>
<dd>Force half duplex operation.</dd>
</dl>
<p class="Pp">For more information on configuring this device, see
<a class="Xr">ifconfig(8)</a>.</p>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="HARDWARE"><a class="permalink" href="#HARDWARE">HARDWARE</a></h1>
<p class="Pp">The <code class="Nm">bge</code> driver provides support for
various NICs based on the Broadcom BCM570x family of Gigabit Ethernet
controller chips, including the following:</p>
<p class="Pp"></p>
<ul class="Bl-bullet Bl-compact">
<li>3Com 3c996-SX (1000baseSX)</li>
<li>3Com 3c996-T (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>Apple Thunderbolt Display (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>Apple Thunderbolt to Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>Dell PowerEdge 1750 integrated BCM5704C NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>Dell PowerEdge 2550 integrated BCM5700 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>Dell PowerEdge 2650 integrated BCM5703 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>Dell PowerEdge R200 integrated BCM5750 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>Dell PowerEdge R300 integrated BCM5722 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>IBM x235 server integrated BCM5703x NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>HP Compaq dc7600 integrated BCM5752 NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>HP ProLiant NC7760 embedded Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>HP ProLiant NC7770 PCI-X Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>HP ProLiant NC7771 PCI-X Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>HP ProLiant NC7781 embedded PCI-X Gigabit NIC (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>Netgear GA302T (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>SysKonnect SK-9D21 (10/100/1000baseTX)</li>
<li>SysKonnect SK-9D41 (1000baseSX)</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="LOADER_TUNABLES"><a class="permalink" href="#LOADER_TUNABLES">LOADER
TUNABLES</a></h1>
<p class="Pp">The following tunables can be set at the
<a class="Xr">loader(8)</a> prompt before booting the kernel, or stored in
<a class="Xr">loader.conf(5)</a>.</p>
<dl class="Bl-tag">
<dt id="hw.bge.allow_asf"><var class="Va">hw.bge.allow_asf</var></dt>
<dd>Allow the ASF feature for cooperating with IPMI. Can cause system lockup
problems on a small number of systems. Enabled by default.</dd>
<dt id="dev.bge._d.msi"><var class="Va">dev.bge.%d.msi</var></dt>
<dd>Non-zero value enables MSI support on the Ethernet hardware. The default
value is 1.</dd>
</dl>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="SYSCTL_VARIABLES"><a class="permalink" href="#SYSCTL_VARIABLES">SYSCTL
VARIABLES</a></h1>
<p class="Pp">The following variables are available as both
<a class="Xr">sysctl(8)</a> variables and <a class="Xr">loader(8)</a>
tunables:</p>
<dl class="Bl-tag">
<dt id="dev.bge._d.forced_collapse"><var class="Va">dev.bge.%d.forced_collapse</var></dt>
<dd>Allow collapsing multiple transmit buffers into a single buffer to
increase transmit performance with the cost of CPU cycles. The default
value is 0 to disable transmit buffer collapsing.</dd>
<dt id="dev.bge._d.forced_udpcsum"><var class="Va">dev.bge.%d.forced_udpcsum</var></dt>
<dd>Enable UDP transmit checksum offloading even if controller can generate
UDP datagrams with checksum value 0. UDP datagrams with checksum value 0
can confuse receiver host as it means sender did not compute UDP checksum.
The default value is 0 which disables UDP transmit checksum offloading.
The interface need to be brought down and up again before a change takes
effect.</dd>
</dl>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="DIAGNOSTICS"><a class="permalink" href="#DIAGNOSTICS">DIAGNOSTICS</a></h1>
<dl class="Bl-diag">
<dt>bge%d: couldn't map memory</dt>
<dd>A fatal initialization error has occurred.</dd>
<dt>bge%d: couldn't map ports</dt>
<dd>A fatal initialization error has occurred.</dd>
<dt>bge%d: couldn't map interrupt</dt>
<dd>A fatal initialization error has occurred.</dd>
<dt>bge%d: no memory for softc struct!</dt>
<dd>The driver failed to allocate memory for per-device instance information
during initialization.</dd>
<dt>bge%d: failed to enable memory mapping!</dt>
<dd>The driver failed to initialize PCI shared memory mapping. This might
happen if the card is not in a bus-master slot.</dd>
<dt>bge%d: firmware handshake timed out, found 0xffffffff</dt>
<dd>The device was physically disconnected from the system, or there is a
problem with the device causing it to stop responding to the host it is
attached to.</dd>
<dt>bge%d: no memory for jumbo buffers!</dt>
<dd>The driver failed to allocate memory for jumbo frames during
initialization.</dd>
<dt>bge%d: watchdog timeout</dt>
<dd>The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem
with the network connection (cable).</dd>
</dl>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="SEE_ALSO"><a class="permalink" href="#SEE_ALSO">SEE
ALSO</a></h1>
<p class="Pp"><a class="Xr">altq(4)</a>, <a class="Xr">arp(4)</a>,
<a class="Xr">miibus(4)</a>, <a class="Xr">netintro(4)</a>,
<a class="Xr">ng_ether(4)</a>, <a class="Xr">polling(4)</a>,
<a class="Xr">vlan(4)</a>, <a class="Xr">ifconfig(8)</a></p>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="HISTORY"><a class="permalink" href="#HISTORY">HISTORY</a></h1>
<p class="Pp">The <code class="Nm">bge</code> device driver first appeared in
<span class="Ux">FreeBSD 4.5</span>.</p>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="AUTHORS"><a class="permalink" href="#AUTHORS">AUTHORS</a></h1>
<p class="Pp">The <code class="Nm">bge</code> driver was written by
<span class="An">Bill Paul</span>
<<a class="Mt" href="mailto:wpaul@windriver.com">wpaul@windriver.com</a>>.</p>
</section>
<section class="Sh">
<h1 class="Sh" id="BUGS"><a class="permalink" href="#BUGS">BUGS</a></h1>
<p class="Pp">Hotplug is not currently supported in
<span class="Ux">FreeBSD</span>, hence, Thunderbolt interfaces need to be
connected prior to system power up on Apple systems in order for the
interface to be detected. Also, due to the lack of hotplug support,
Thunderbolt-based interfaces must not be removed while the system is up as
the kernel is currently unable to cope with a <code class="Nm">bge</code>
interface disappearing.</p>
<p class="Pp">The UDP transmit checksum offloading is disabled by default, see
<var class="Va">dev.bge.%d.forced_udpcsum</var>. To avoid problems when the
interface is a member of a <a class="Xr">bridge(4)</a> interface, all
transmit checksum offloading is initially disabled in this case. Transmit
checksum offloading can be enabled using <a class="Xr">ifconfig(8)</a>.</p>
</section>
</div>
<table class="foot">
<tr>
<td class="foot-date">January 16, 2026</td>
<td class="foot-os">FreeBSD 15.0</td>
</tr>
</table>
|
