Re: Which network driver for RTL8211 or 8201 NIC's?
b. f.
> I need to replace a failing motherboard. I'm aiming to keep the existing
> Athlon CPU so I'm tied down to to a socket AM2(+) board and the
> majority of those available seem to have nForce 630a chipsets and
> RTL8211CL or 8201EL NIC's which aren't explicitly mentioned in the
> release notes
> <http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.1R/hardware.html#ETHERNET>. I see
> that the strings RTL8211C(L) and RTL8201L (but not EL) appear
> in /usr/src/sys/dev/rgephy.c and rlphy.c but the man page for the rl
> driver only mentions RealTek 8129/8139 and I'm not sure which driver is
> built from rgephy.c.
>
> Am I going to have problems if I get a motherboard with one of these
> NIC's?
It's a bit confusing, because there are product numbers associated
with NICs, and with different individual component chipsets, and some
code is shared. Pyun YongHyeon, who has been working on the re(4) and
rl(4) drivers in -CURRENT and -STABLE recently, could probably tell
you more (I've cc'ed him).
b.
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Pyun YongHyeon
> Mike Clarke wrote:
> > I need to replace a failing motherboard. I'm aiming to keep the existing
> > Athlon CPU so I'm tied down to to a socket AM2(+) board and the
> > majority of those available seem to have nForce 630a chipsets and
> > RTL8211CL or 8201EL NIC's which aren't explicitly mentioned in the
> > release notes
> > <http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.1R/hardware.html#ETHERNET>. I see
> > that the strings RTL8211C(L) and RTL8201L (but not EL) appear
> > in /usr/src/sys/dev/rgephy.c and rlphy.c but the man page for the rl
> > driver only mentions RealTek 8129/8139 and I'm not sure which driver is
> > built from rgephy.c.
> >
> > Am I going to have problems if I get a motherboard with one of these
> > NIC's?
>
> It's a bit confusing, because there are product numbers associated
> with NICs, and with different individual component chipsets, and some
Correct. Identifying exact model number is the one of hardest thing
in Realtek controllers. I think RTL8211CL or 8201EL are not MAC
controller but the PHY model name. These PHY are supported by
rlphy(4) since they are not gigabit PHY(e.g. Fast Ethernet).
> code is shared. Pyun YongHyeon, who has been working on the re(4) and
> rl(4) drivers in -CURRENT and -STABLE recently, could probably tell
> you more (I've cc'ed him).
>
All Realtek controllers are supported so I think you don't have to
worry about that. Very recent controller like RTL8105 is not
supported yet but it would be done in near future.
Mike Clarke
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 11:54:54PM +0000, b. f. wrote:
> > Mike Clarke wrote:
> > > I need to replace a failing motherboard. I'm aiming to keep the
> > > existing Athlon CPU so I'm tied down to to a socket AM2(+) board
> > > and the majority of those available seem to have nForce 630a
> > > chipsets and RTL8211CL or 8201EL NIC's which aren't explicitly
> > > mentioned in the release notes
> > > <http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.1R/hardware.html#ETHERNET>. I
> > > see that the strings RTL8211C(L) and RTL8201L (but not EL) appear
> > > in /usr/src/sys/dev/rgephy.c and rlphy.c but the man page for the
> > > rl driver only mentions RealTek 8129/8139 and I'm not sure which
> > > driver is built from rgephy.c.
> > >
> > > Am I going to have problems if I get a motherboard with one of
> > > these NIC's?
> >
> > It's a bit confusing, because there are product numbers associated
> > with NICs, and with different individual component chipsets, and
> > some
>
> Correct. Identifying exact model number is the one of hardest thing
> in Realtek controllers. I think RTL8211CL or 8201EL are not MAC
> controller but the PHY model name. These PHY are supported by
> rlphy(4) since they are not gigabit PHY(e.g. Fast Ethernet).
I recently found someone with a motherboard with the same chipset in a
Windows PC and was able to experiment with it by booting off a FreeBSD
install CD to confirm that the RTL8211CL was recognised. So I went
ahead and bought my new motherboard (Gigabyte GA-M68M-S2P) and things
are working fine.
According to the specs the RTL8211CL is Fast Ethernet, claiming
10/100/1000 Mb/sec. I'm only using 100Mb/sec so can't confirm the
1000Mb capability.
In case the information is of use to anyone, here's an extract from
dmesg:
nfe0: <NVIDIA nForce MCP61 Networking Adapter> port 0xec00-0xec07 mem
0xfe02d000-0xfe02dfff irq 20 at device 7.0 on pci0
miibus0: <MII bus> on nfe0
rgephy0: <RTL8169S/8110S/8211B media interface> PHY 3 on miibus0
rgephy0: 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseT,
1000baseT-FDX, auto
nfe0: Ethernet address: 6c:f0:49:9e:88:97
nfe0: [FILTER]
... and pciconf -lv
nfe0@pci0:0:7:0: class=0x068000 card=0xe0001458 chip=0x03ef10de
rev=0xa2 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'NVIDIA Corporation'
device = 'Nvidia Networking Card (nForce 405)'
class = bridge
--
Mike Clarke