Intel IXP400 manual Access-Layer Components Ethernet Access IxEthAcc API, IxEthAcc Overview

Intel® IXP400 Software

Access-Layer Components:	9
Ethernet Access (IxEthAcc) API

This chapter describes the Intel® IXP400 Software v2.0’s “Ethernet Access API” access-layer component.

9.1What’s New

The following changes and enhancements were made to this component in software release 2.0:

•The Ethernet subsystem has been enhanced to include support for the Intel® IXP46X Product Line of Network Processors. This includes supporting the MII interface attached to NPE-A. All enumerations and definitions reference the Ethernet port on NPE-A as Port 2, except for the ixp_ne_dest_port and ixp_ne_src_port IX_OSAL_MBUF fields.

Note: The Intel® IXP46X product line processors include an option for a 4-port SMII capability, using four Ethernet coprocessors on NPE-B. In software release 2.0, this functionality is not supported. On NPE-B, only a single MII interface is supported.

•New API functions have been added for enhancing Ethernet diagnostic capabilities and forcing a hard immediate shutdown of ports in emergency security situations. These new functions are:

—ixEthAccPortNpeLoopbackEnable(), ixEthAccPortNpeLoopbackDisable()

—ixEthAccPortTxEnable(), ixEthAccPortTxDisable()

—ixEthAccPortRxEnable(), ixEthAccPorRxDisable()

—ixEthAccPortMacReset()

•New API ixEthAccMiiAccessTimeoutSet(). This new function is used to override the default timeout value (100ms) and retry count when reading or writing MII registers using ixEthAccMiiWriteRtn() or ixEthAccMiiReadRtn(). This is useful to speed up read/write operations to PHY registers. ixEthAccMiiWriteRtn() and ixEthAccMiiReadRtn() are unmodified, to retain backwards compatibility.

•The number of receive priority queues is now 8 for configurations where NPE microcode with QoS-enabled Ethernet services are configured for NPE-A.

9.2IxEthAcc Overview

The IxEthAcc component (along with its related components, IxEthDB and IxEthMii) provides data plane, control plane, and management plane information for the Ethernet MAC devices residing on the Intel® IXP4XX Product Line of Network Processors and IXC1100 Control Plane Processor. Depending on which processor variants are being used, the Intel® IXP4XX product line and IXC1100 control plane processors contain one, two, or three 10/100-Mbps Ethernet MAC devices.

Programmer’s Guide	IXP400 Software Version 2.0	April 2005
	Document Number: 252539, Revision: 007	129