10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter Device Driver (23100020)
The 10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter Device Driver (23100020) supports the following additional configuration parameters:
- Software Transmit Queue
- Indicates the number of transmit requests that can be queued for transmission by the device driver. Valid values range from 16 through 16 384.
- Hardware Receive Queue
- The 10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter Device Driver (23100020) supports a user-configurable receive queue for the adapter. This is the actual queue the adapter uses to receive packets. Each element corresponds to an Ethernet packet. It is configurable at 16, 32, 64, 128, and 256 elements.
- Receive Buffer Pool
- The 10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter Device Driver (23100020) implements a private pool of receive memory buffers in order to enhance driver performance. The number of private receive buffers reserved by the driver is configurable from 16 to 2048 elements.
- Media Speed
- The 10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter Device Driver (23100020)
supports a user-configurable media speed for the adapter. The media
speed attribute indicates the speed at which the adapter attempts
to operate. The available speeds are 10 Mbps half-duplex, 10 Mbps
full-duplex, 100 Mbps half-duplex, 100 Mbps full-duplex and autonegotiation,
with a default of autonegotiation. Select autonegotiate when the adapter
should use autonegotiation across the network to determine the speed.
When the network does not support autonegotiation, select the specific
speed. Note: If autonegotiation is selected, the remote link device must also be set to autonegotiate or the link might not function properly.
- Inter Packet Gap
- The 10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter Device Driver (23100020) supports a user-configurable inter packet gap for the adapter. The inter packet gap attribute controls the aggressiveness of the adapter on the network. A small number increases the aggressiveness of the adapter, but a large number decreases the aggressiveness (and increase the fairness) of the adapter. A small number (more aggressive) could cause the adapter to capture the network by forcing other less aggressive nodes to defer. A larger number (less aggressive) might cause the adapter to defer more often than normal. If the statistics for other nodes on the network show a large number of collisions and deferrals, then try increasing this number. The default is 96, which results in IPG of 9.6 micro seconds for 10 Mbps and 0.96 microseconds for 100 Mbps media speed. Each unit of bit rate introduces an IPG of 100 nsec at 10 Mbps, and 10 nsec at 100 Mbps media speed.
- Link Polling Timer
- The 10/100 Mbps Ethernet PCI Adapter Device Driver (23100020) implements a polling function (Enable Link Polling) that periodically queries the adapter to determine whether the Ethernet link is up or down. The Enable Link Polling attribute is disabled by default. If this function is enabled, the link polling timer value indicates how often the driver should poll the adapter for link status. This value can range from 100 to 1000 milliseconds. If the adapter's link goes down, the device driver disables its NDD_RUNNING flag. When the device driver finds that the link has come back up, it enables this NDD_RUNNING flag. In order for this to work successfully, protocol layer implementations, such as Etherchannel, need notification if the link has gone down. Enable the Enable Link Polling attribute to obtain this notification. Because of the additional PIO calls that the device driver makes, enabling this attribute can decrease the performance of this adapter.