DESCRIPTION
The re driver provides support for various NICs based on the RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL8169S and RTL8110S PCI Ethernet controllers. NICs based on the 8139C+ are capable of 10 and 100Mbps speeds over CAT5 cable. NICs based on the 8169, 8169S and 8110S are capable of 10, 100 and 1000Mbps operation.
All NICs supported by the re driver have TCP/IP checksum offload and hardware VLAN tagging/insertion features, and use a descriptor-based DMA mechanism. They are also capable of TCP large send (TCP segmentation 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 and 8110S 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 is 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 receive and transmit jumbo frames.
The re driver supports the following media types:
