NAME

ixgbe — Intel 10Gb PCI Express NIC Driver

SYNOPSIS

/dev/ixgbe* /dev/net/ixgbe*

DESCRIPTION

The ixgbe 10 Gigabit Ethernet driver is a GLDV3 NIC driver for various Intel PCIe Controllers including:

Intel 82598EB Ethernet Controller Family
Intel 82599EB (X520) Ethernet Controller Family
Intel X540 Ethernet Controller Family
Intel X550 Ethernet Controller Family
Intel E610 Ethernet Controller Family

The ixgbe driver functions include controller initialization, frame transmit and receive, multiple transmit and receive groups with receive side scaling (RSS), promiscuous and multicast support, transceiver management, LED control, UFM management, and error recovery and reporting.

The supported speeds vary based on the controller. The 82598 and 82599 generally interface with optical transceivers. The X540 supports 1 and 10GBASE-T, while the X550 and the E610 support 1, 2.5, 5, and 10GBASE-T. The specific supported speeds vary based on the controller.

APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE

The cloning character-special device, /dev/ixgbe, is used to access all ixgbe based devices installed within the system.

The ixgbe driver is managed by the dladm(8) command line utility, which allows VLANs to be defined on top of ixgbe instances and for ixgbe instances to be aggregated. See dladm(8) for more details.

You must send an explicit DL_ATTACH_REQ message to associate the opened stream with a particular device (PPA). The PPA ID is interpreted as an unsigned integer data type and indicates the corresponding device instance (unit) number. The driver returns an error (DL_ERROR_ACK) if the PPA field value does not correspond to a valid device instance number for the system. The device is initialized on first attach and de-initialized (stopped) at last detach.

The values returned by the driver in the DL_INFO_ACK primitive in response to the DL_INFO_REQ are:

Maximum SDU for Intel 82598EB is 16366.
Maximum SDU for Intel 82599EB, X540 and X550 is 15500.
Maximum SDU for Intel E610 is 9710.
Minimum SDU is 0.
DLSAP address length is 8.
MAC type is DL_ETHER.
SAP (Service Access Point) length value is -2, meaning the physical address component is followed immediately by a 2-byte SAP component within the DLSAP address.
Broadcast address value is the Ethernet/IEEE broadcast address (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF).
Once in the DL_ATTACHED state, you must send a DL_BIND_REQ to associate a particular SAP with the stream.

CONFIGURATION

By default, the ixgbe driver performs auto-negotiation to select the link speed and mode. Link speed and mode can only be 10000 Mbps full-duplex for fiber. For copper, supported speeds may include 100, 1000, 2500, 5000, and 10000 Mbps full-duplex. See the IEEE802.3 standard for more information.

FILES

/dev/ixgbe*, /dev/net/ixgbe*: Special character device.
/kernel/drv/amd64/ixgbe: Device driver (x86)
/kernel/drv/ixgbe.conf: Driver configuration file