The on-board Broadcom Network Interface Card offers 'flow control' as a feature which can be used in advanced network configurations to control performance where bottlenecks occur.
Source
RETAIN tip: H194309
Symptom
The on-board Broadcom Network Interface Card (NIC) offers 'flow control' as a feature which can be used in advanced network configurations to control performance where bottlenecks occur.
When using Novell NetWare 6.x, or higher, as the operating system platform, the traditional method of configuring the 'flow control' feature/functionality is not recommended. In addition, Broadcom changed to a new descriptor value for activating this feature/functionality for the NetWare LAN driver.
The traditional method for configuring "flow control" on the Broadcom NIC driver under NetWare involved direct editing of the AUTOEXEC.NCF file to add the options "TxFlow=ON" or "RxFlow=ON" to the LAN driver LOAD statement.
Example:
| |
LOAD B57 NAME=B57_1_EII_EII FRAME=ETHERNET_II SLOT=10016 Speed=AUTO TxFlow=ON RxFlow=ON |
However, under NetWare 6.x, and higher, the INETCFG utility replaced the traditional method for configuring the LAN driver or IP protocol parameters for the NIC. The method for adding the 'flow control' feature/functionality to the INETCFG interface involves direct editing of the BX2.LDI file which accompanies the BX2.LAN driver file.
Using this method, when INETCFG parses the BX2.LDI file, the 'flow control' option will appear in the INETCFG interface in the NIC's configuration window. INETCFG will automatically append the necessary NetWare configuration files by appending the command to that file, and when the operating system loads, the 'flow control' feature will be activated based on selections made in INETCFG.
Affected configurations
The system is configured with at least one of the following:
- Novell NetWare 6.5, SP6,SP7
This tip is not hardware specific.
This tip is not option specific.
The BX2.LAN device driver for the onboard Broadcom NIC is affected.
Note: This does not imply that the network operating system will work under all combinations of hardware and software.
Please see the compatibility page for more information:
Solution
The fix for this solution must be viewed from two distinct viewpoints:
- The NetWare INETCFG configuration utility must be used to configure the LAN/NIC driver and IP protocol features.
Note: Novell no longer recommends direct editing of the AUTOEXEC.NCF file for the purposes of configuring LAN drivers.
- Flow control is not a default option that appears in the INETCFG interface for the Broadcom LAN driver. Therefore, the BX2.LDI file must be edited to add this feature/functionality.
- Use the "FLOWCTRL" descriptor value when modifying or editing the BX2.LDI file's configuration parameters to add 'flow control' as an option in the INETCFG interface.
Below is an example of how you would modify the BX2.LDI file to include the option to activate 'flow control' when using the INETCFG utility to configure the Broadcom NetWare LAN driver.
PR FLOWCTRL OPT
| |
{
DES: " Flow Control"
Type: STR
default: 'BOTH'
OutputFormat: 'FLOWCTRL=%s'
} |
Other options for configuring 'flow control' using the FLOWCTRL descriptor value: 'NONE', 'TX', 'RX'. The default shown in the above example is 'BOTH'.
The following link to Novell's web site provides useful information on modifying the configuration parameters of the NetWare LDI files.
Note: This document uses the older language of RxFlow and TxFlow as descriptor values; therefore, substitute "FLOWCTRL" as the descriptor value and limit the instantiation of this parameter to one entry in the BX2.LDI file.
Additional information
The Broadcom documentation that accompanies the driver software includes old language when attempting to explain how to activate the "flow control" feature on the Broadcom driver. This method advises direct editing of the AUTOEXEC.NCF file, which is no longer recommended by Novell.
Broadcom changed the descriptor value from RxFlow and TxFlow to a new descriptor value "FLOWCTRL" for activating the "flow control" feature/functionality. It is necessary to include the correct descriptor value in order to activate flow control for NetWare 6.x, and higher operating system platforms.
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