Configuring the Network Card


As you learned in the last chapter, a computer can have multiple Ethernet cards (interfaces), and each of these cards can have multiple IP addresses and related settings. The convention is for each machine to have one Ethernet card with one IP address, but there's no reason to limit yourself in that regard. This chapter shows you how to set up as many simultaneously installed cards as you like. You also learn how to bind as many IP addresses to each card as you see fit.

The first step is to make sure you have at least one Ethernet card that FreeBSD will work with. Table 23.1 lists all the cards (more specifically, chipsetscards from different manufacturers often use standardized chipsets that FreeBSD recognizes) that are supported in the GENERIC kernel. These cards comprise the vast majority of those used today, and your system should recognize any of these without any additional tweaking. The PCI cards are particularly well recognized by FreeBSD. A good many other cards are supported by FreeBSD but not included in the GENERIC kernel; drivers for these cards are usually available as kernel modules that are automatically loaded at boot time if necessary. For example, the an driver (for the Aironet Wi-Fi chipset) is available as /boot/kernel/if_an.ko. Refer to /sys/conf/NOTES (as discussed in the section "The NOTES Files and LINT," in Chapter 18, "Kernel Configuration") and recompile the kernel to include support for your card if you want to improve your system's boot time and stability by avoiding loading kernel modules.

Table 23.1. Ethernet Cards Supported in the Default (GENERIC) FreeBSD Kernel

Device Name

Cards Supported

PCI Cards

de

DEC/Intel DC21x4x (Tulip)

em

Intel PRO/1000 adapter Gigabit Ethernet Card

ixgb

Intel PRO/10GbE Ethernet Card

txp

3Com 3cR990 (Typhoon)

vx

3Com 3c590, 3c595 (Vortex)

PCI/MII Cards

bfe

Broadcom BCM440x 10/100 Ethernet

bge

Broadcom BCM570xx Gigabit Ethernet

dc

DEC/Intel 21143 and various workalikes

fxp

Intel EtherExpress Pro/100B (82557, 82558)

lge

Level 1 LXT1001 gigabit ethernet

nge

NatSemi DP83820 gigabit ethernet

pcn

AMD Am79C79x PCI 10/100 NICs

re

RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S

rl

RealTek 8129/8139

sf

Adaptec AIC-6915 (Starfire)

sis

Silicon Integrated Systems SiS 900/SiS 7016

sk

SysKonnect SK-984x & SK-982x gigabit Ethernet

ste

Sundance ST201 (D-Link DFE-550TX)

ti

Alteon Networks Tigon I/II gigabit Ethernet

tl

Texas Instruments ThunderLAN

tx

SMC 9432TX (83c170 "EPIC")

vge

VIA VT612x gigabit ethernet

vr

VIA Rhine, Rhine II

wb

Winbond W89C840F

xl

3Com 3c90x (Boomerang, Cyclone)

ISA Cards

cs

Crystal Semiconductor CS89x0 NIC

ed

Novell NE1000/NE2000, 3Com 3c503, SMC Ultra, DS8390 cards

ex

Intel EtherExpress Pro/10 and Pro/10+

ep

Etherlink III based cards

fe

Fujitsu MB8696x-based cards

ie

EtherExpress 8/16, 3C507, StarLAN 10, and so on

lnc

NE2100, NE32-VL Lance Ethernet cards

sn

SMC 9000 series

xe

Xircom PC-card Ethernet

Wireless (802.11) PCMCIA Cards

an

Aironet 4500/4800

awi

BayStack 660 and others

wi

Lucent WaveLAN/Intersil/Symbol


Note

Be aware that the list of supported Ethernet cards changes fairly frequently. The devices are listed in the GENERIC kernel config file on your system, /sys/i386/conf/GENERIC. This will be the authoritative source for what cards are supported by your system.


Most Ethernet cards sold today for x86 hardware are PCI-based. This means that the PCI controller handles all the addressing automatically and you don't need to do any of the IRQ/DMA/memory address gyrations associated with ISA cards, the last of which was seen in the late 1990s. If you're stuck with one of these older cards, though, there are a few things you need to do, such as setting the card's memory address and IRQ through a DOS utility and modifying the device hints for the card. You learn more about these accommodations in the sidebar "Coping with ISA Ethernet Cards" later in this chapter.




FreeBSD 6 Unleashed
FreeBSD 6 Unleashed
ISBN: 0672328755
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 355
Authors: Brian Tiemann

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