Driver for the family of Realtek Gigabit Ethernet network cards

[Jakub Jermář]

Implement a native HelenOS driver for one or more clones of the Realtek Gigabit Ethernet network interface card.

Details

The new driver should be realized as a module which plugs itself into the HelenOS networking stack and implements the network interface card interface in the Realtek device specific way.

There appears to be several clones and variants of Realtek Gigabit Ethernet, namely RTL8111/RTL8168/RTL8169. The driver should be implemented with this in mind to provide support for the widest range of Realtek gigabit ethernet clones.

What Gains and Benefits will this bring?

HelenOS will be able to make use of its networking capability on a wider spectrum of machines. The Realtek Gigabit Ethernet is commonly found on commodity PCs with AMD processors. The NICs from this family are the equivalent of the Intel Gigabit Ethernet as found on computers with Intel CPUs. HelenOS already supports the Intel Gigabit Ethernet and so supporting the other widespread gigabit ethernet is a logical direction of enhancement.

Difficulty

Medium to High

Required skills

A successful applicant will have good skills of programming in the C language and the ability to learn and use HelenOS specific I/O functions. A successful applicant should have a fair understanding of the workings of the networking stack and the NICF too.

The applicants should make sure they have physical access to a machine with one or more of these network cards. Several members of the HelenOS team are in possession of these NICs too.

Documentation

• HelenOS NICF documentation
• Networking and TCP/IP stack for HelenOS system
• Networking stack Reference Manual
• Developer documentation for NIC

Possible mentors

HelenOS Core Team, Jakub Jermar, Martin Decky, Jiri Svoboda