3.7 Ethernet network adapter drivers

NET_DRV_N

Number of needed network adapter drivers.

If you use the router with ISDN, you typically have one network adapter only, hence the default value is 1. However, if you use DSL, you will have two network adapters in the majority of cases.

You have to separate two cases:

  1. Both adapters are of the same type. Then you will have to specify only one driver communicating with both adapters, hence NET_DRV_N='1'.

  2. The types of the adapters used differ. Then you have to set the variable to `2' and to configure the drivers separately for both adapters.

NET_DRV_x NET_DRV_x_OPTION

This variable contains the name of the driver to be used for the network adapter. The default for NET_DRV_1 is to load the driver for a NE2000 compatible network adapter. More available drivers for a large amount of families of network adapters are included in the tables [*] and [*].

The 3COM EtherLinkIII network adapter (3c509) has to be configured by the DOS tool 3c509cfg.exe, available under:

ftp://ftp.ihg.uni-duisburg.de/Hardware/3com/3C5x9n/3C5X9CFG.EXE

It should be used for setting the IRQ and I/O port and, if necessary, the type of connection (BNC/TP). The entry NET_DRV_x_OPTION='' can normally be left empty.

Some ISA adapters require the driver to have additional information in order to find the adapter, e.g. the I/O address. This is the case e.g. for NE2000 compatible ISA adapters and the EtherExpress16.

In such a case, you can set

        NET_DRV_x_OPTION='io=0x340'

(or the corresponding numerical value).

If no options are required, you can leave this variable empty.

If you need to specify more than one option, you have to separate them by blanks, e.g.

        NET_DRV_x_OPTION='irq=9 io=0x340'

If you use two identical network adapters, e.g. NE2000 ISA adapters, you have to separate the different I/O ports by commas:

        NET_DRV_x_OPTION='io=0x240,0x300'

No space is allowed before or after the comma!

This does not work with all network adapter drivers. Some of them need to be loaded twice, i.e. you have to use NET_DRV_N='2'. In this case you will have to assign different names to the adapters by using the ``-o'' option, e.g.

          NET_DRV_N='2'
          NET_DRV_1='3c503'
          NET_DRV_1_OPTION='-o 3c503-0 io=0x280'
          NET_DRV_2='3c503'
          NET_DRV_2_OPTION='-o 3c503-1 io=0x300'

We recommend to try the ``comma'' method first before falling back to loading the driver multiple times.

Some more examples:

You can find the complete list of available drivers in the documentation of the respective kernel package.

If you need a dummy device, use 'dummy' as your NET_DRV_x and
IP_NET_x_DEV='dummy<number>' as your device.

© 2001-2022 The fli4l-Team - 5 September 2022