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RE(4) Device Drivers Manual RE(4)

re — Realtek 8139C+/8169/816xS/811xS/8168/810xE 10/100/Gigabit Ethernet device

re* at pci?
re* at cardbus?
eephy* at mii?
rgephy* at mii?
rlphy* at mii?

The re driver provides support for various NICs based on the Realtek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL816xS, RTL811xS, RTL8168 and RTL810xE PCI and PCI Express Ethernet controllers, including the following:

NICs based on the 8139C+ and 810xE are capable of 10 and 100Mbps speeds over CAT5 cable. NICs based on the 8169, 816xS, 811xS and 8168 are capable of 10, 100 and 1000Mbps operation.

All re NICs support IPv4 transmit/receive IP/TCP/UDP checksum offload, VLAN tag insertion and stripping, and use a descriptor-based DMA mechanism. The 8102E(L), 8103E(L), 8168C/8111C, 8168D/8111D, 8168DP/8111DP and 8168E/8111E chips also support IPv6 receive TCP/UDP checksum offload.

The 8139C+ is a single-chip solution combining both a 10/100 MAC and PHY. The 8169 is a 10/100/1000 MAC only, requiring a GMII or TBI external PHY. The 8169S, 8110S, 8111B and 8168 are single-chip devices containing both a 10/100/1000 MAC and 10/100/1000 copper PHY. Standalone 10/100/1000 cards are available in both 32-bit PCI and 64-bit PCI models. The 8110S and 8111B are designed for embedded LAN-on-motherboard applications.

The 8169, 8169S and 8110S also support Jumbo frames, which can be configured via the interface MTU setting. The MTU is limited to 7422, since the chip cannot transmit larger frames. Selecting an MTU larger than 1500 bytes with the ifconfig(8) utility configures the adapter to transmit Jumbo frames.

The re driver additionally supports Wake on LAN (WoL). See arp(8) and ifconfig(8) for more details.

The re 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 the appropriate hostname.if(5) file.
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.
1000baseT
Set 1000baseT operation over twisted pair. The Realtek GigE chips support 1000Mbps in full-duplex mode only.

The re 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).

arp(4), eephy(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), rgephy(4), rlphy(4), hostname.if(5), ifconfig(8)

Realtek Semiconductor RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL8169S and RTL8110S datasheets, http://www.realtek.com.tw.

The re device driver first appeared in OpenBSD 3.6.

The re driver was written by Bill Paul ⟨wpaul@windriver.com⟩ and ported to OpenBSD by Peter Valchev ⟨pvalchev@openbsd.org⟩.

The Xterasys XN-152 32-bit PCI NIC, which uses the RTL8169 MAC and Marvell 88E1000 PHY, has a defect that causes DMA corruption if the board is plugged into a 64-bit PCI slot. The defect lies in the board design, not the chip itself: the PCI REQ64# and ACK64# lines should be pulled high, but they are not. The result is that the 8169 chip is tricked into performing 64-bit DMA transfers even though a 64-bit data path between the NIC and the bus does not actually exist.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to correct this problem in software, however it is possible to detect it. The user should ensure the NIC is installed in a 32-bit PCI slot to avoid this problem.

The Realtek 8169, 8169S and 8110S chips are only capable of transmitting Jumbo frames up to 7440 bytes in size.

March 13, 2011 OpenBSD-5.1