6. Ethernet Information

This section covers information specific to Ethernet and the configuring of Ethernet Cards.

6.1 Supported Ethernet Cards

3Com

• 3Com 3c501 - `avoid like the plague'' (3c501 driver)
• 3Com 3c503 (3c503 driver), 3c505 (3c505 driver), 3c507 (3c507 driver), 3c509/3c509B (ISA) / 3c579 (EISA)
• 3Com Etherlink III Vortex Ethercards (3c590, 3c592, 3c595, 3c597) (PCI), 3Com Etherlink XL Boomerang (3c900, 3c905) (PCI) and Cyclone (3c905B, 3c980) Ethercards (3c59x driver) and 3Com Fast EtherLink Ethercard (3c515) (ISA) (3c515 driver)
• 3Com 3ccfe575 Cyclone Cardbus (3c59x driver)
• 3Com 3c575 series Cardbus (3c59x driver) (ALL PCMCIA ??)

AMD, ATT, Allied Telesis, Ansel, Apricot

• AMD LANCE (79C960) / PCnet-ISA/PCI (AT1500, HP J2405A, NE1500/NE2100)
• ATT GIS WaveLAN
• Allied Telesis AT1700
• Allied Telesis LA100PCI-T
• Allied Telesyn AT2400T/BT ("ne" module)
• Ansel Communications AC3200 (EISA)
• Apricot Xen-II / 82596

Cabletron, Cogent, Crystal Lan

• Cabletron E21xx
• Cogent EM110
• Crystal Lan CS8920, Cs8900

Danpex, DEC, Digi, DLink

• Danpex EN-9400
• DEC DE425 (EISA) / DE434/DE435 (PCI) / DE450/DE500 (DE4x5 driver)
• DEC DE450/DE500-XA (dc21x4x) (Tulip driver)
• DEC DEPCA and EtherWORKS
• DEC EtherWORKS 3 (DE203, DE204, DE205)
• DECchip DC21x4x "Tulip"
• DEC QSilver's (Tulip driver)
• Digi International RightSwitch
• DLink DE-220P, DE-528CT, DE-530+, DFE-500TX, DFE-530TX

Fujitsu, HP, ICL, Intel

• Fujitsu FMV-181/182/183/184
• HP PCLAN (27245 and 27xxx series)
• HP PCLAN PLUS (27247B and 27252A)
• HP 10/100VG PCLAN (J2577, J2573, 27248B, J2585) (ISA/EISA/PCI)
• ICL EtherTeam 16i / 32 (EISA)
• Intel EtherExpress
• Intel EtherExpress Pro

KTI, Macromate, NCR NE2000/1000, Netgear, New Media

• KTI ET16/P-D2, ET16/P-DC ISA (work jumperless and with hardware-configuration options)
• Macromate MN-220P (PnP or NE2000 mode)
• NCR WaveLAN
• NE2000/NE1000 (be careful with clones)
• Netgear FA-310TX (Tulip chip)
• New Media Ethernet

PureData, SEEQ, SMC

• PureData PDUC8028, PDI8023
• SEEQ 8005
• SMC Ultra / EtherEZ (ISA)
• SMC 9000 series
• SMC PCI EtherPower 10/100 (DEC Tulip driver)
• SMC EtherPower II (epic100.c driver)

Sun Lance, Sun Intel, Schneider, WD, Zenith, IBM, Enyx

• Sun LANCE adapters (kernel 2.2 and newer)
• Sun Intel adapters (kernel 2.2 and newer)
• Schneider and Koch G16
• Western Digital WD80x3
• Zenith Z-Note / IBM ThinkPad 300 built-in adapter
• Znyx 312 etherarray (Tulip driver)

6.2 General Ethernet Information

Ethernet devices names are `eth0', `eth1', `eth2' etc. The first card detected by the kernel is assigned `eth0' and the rest are assigned sequentially in the order they are detected.

Once you have your kernel properly built to support your ethernet card then configuration of the card is easy.

Typically you would use something like (which most distributions already do for you, if you configured them to support your ethernet):

        root# ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
        root# route add -net 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 eth0
        

Most of the ethernet drivers were developed by Donald Becker

6.3 Using 2 or more Ethernet Cards in the same machine

If your driver is a module (Normal with newer distros)

The module will typically can detect all of the installed cards.

Information fromt he detection is stored in the file:

/etc/conf.modules.

Consider that a user has 3 NE2000 cards, one at 0x300 one at 0x240, and one at 0x220. You would add the following lines to the /etc/conf.modules file:

        alias eth0 ne
        alias eth1 ne
        alias eth2 ne
        options ne io=0x220,0x240,0x300
   

What this does is tell the program modprobe to look for 3 NE based cards at the following addresses. It also states in which order they should be found and the device they should be assigned.

Most ISA modules can take multiple comma separated I/O values. For example:

        alias eth0 3c501
        alias eth1 3c501
        options eth0 -o 3c501-0 io=0x280 irq=5
        options eth1 -o 3c501-1 io=0x300 irq=7
        

The -o option allows for a unique name to be assigned to each module. The reason for this is that you can not have two copies of the same module loaded.

The irq= option is used to specify the hardware IRQ and the io= to specify the different io ports.

By default, the Linux kernel only probes for one Ethernet device, you need to pass command line arguments to the kernel in order to force detection of furter boards.

To learn how to make your ethernet card(s) working under Linux you should refer to the Ethernet-HOWTO.