Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 10:49:25 +0000 From: Mike Clarke <jmc-freebsd2@milibyte.co.uk> To: pyunyh@gmail.com, freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, bf1783@gmail.com Subject: Re: Which network driver for RTL8211 or 8201 NIC's? Message-ID: <201101201049.25511.jmc-freebsd2@milibyte.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <20110120003538.GE12030@michelle.cdnetworks.com> References: <AANLkTimLm4vAGXVdukSo1xYiei1nzG1tSGDxp=Ocpoof@mail.gmail.com> <20110120003538.GE12030@michelle.cdnetworks.com>
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On Thursday 20 January 2011, Pyun YongHyeon wrote: > 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
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