Broadcom 5708 taking a few seconds to get link-up

Hi Michael,

I'm working on a system that has two on-board 5708's. We've noticed that it takes about 3 seconds for the link to come up - is this considered normal? I've tried this with the latest davem tree with similar results to older kernels/drivers.

# uname -r
2.6.24

# ethtool -i eth3
driver: bnx2
version: 1.7.3
firmware-version: 1.9.3
bus-info: 0000:42:00.0

# lspci -v
42:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II BCM5708 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 11)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 7038
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 34
        Memory at fa000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
        Capabilities: [40] PCI-X non-bridge device
        Capabilities: [48] Power Management version 2
        Capabilities: [50] Vital Product Data
        Capabilities: [58] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit+ 
Queue=0/0 Enable-

# ip link set eth3 up; mii-tool eth3; sleep 1; mii-tool eth3; sleep 1; mii-tool eth3; sleep 1; mii-tool eth3
eth3: no link
eth3: no link
eth3: no link
eth3: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok

Other drivers I've tried - e1000 and tg3, get up in < 1 second. I'm asking becuase any packet I try to transmit out this interface before link-up never gets out.

Thanks for any info,

-Brian

Yes, 2 - 3 seconds are normal for autoneg to link up on 10/100/1000baseT. Sometimes it can take even longer, but generally less than 5 seconds. SerDes is much faster.

In BNX2 and TG3, we always reset the PHY when we bring up the device, causing the link to drop and to renegotiate. The link-up time for TG3 should be about the same (2 - 3 seconds). Other drivers may not reset the PHY and so the link may be able to come up instantly.