Realtek RTL8111EP-CG

RTL8111EP-CG General Description

The Realtek RTL8111EP-CG 10/100/1000M Ethernet controller combines a triple-speed IEEE 802.3 compatible Media Access Controller (MAC) with a triple-speed Ethernet transceiver, PCI Express bus controller, and embedded memory. For the RTL8111EP, the USB redirection feature is implemented by virtual USB over PCIe as defined in the EHCI Specification.

With state-of-the-art DSP technology and mixed-mode signal technology, the RTL8111EP offers high-speed transmission over CAT 5 UTP cable or CAT 3 UTP (10Mbps only) cable. Functions such as Crossover Detection and Auto-Correction, polarity correction, adaptive equalization, cross-talk cancellation, echo cancellation, timing recovery, and error correction are implemented to provide robust transmission and reception capability at high speeds.

The RTL8111EP is compatible with the IEEE 802.3u specification for 10/100Mbps Ethernet and the IEEE 802.3ab specification for 1000Mbps Ethernet. It also supports an auxiliary power auto-detect function, and will auto-configure related bits of the PCI power management registers in PCI configuration space.

Advanced Configuration Power management Interface (ACPI)—power management for modern operating systems that are capable of Operating System-directed Power Management (OSPM)—is supported to achieve the most efficient power management possible. PCI MSI (Message Signaled Interrupt) and MSI-X are also supported.

In addition to the ACPI feature, remote wake-up (including AMD Magic Packet and Microsoft Wake-Up Frame) is supported in both ACPI and APM (Advanced Power Management) environments. To support WOL from a deep power down state (e.g., D3cold, i.e., main power is off and only auxiliary exists), the auxiliary power source must be able to provide the needed power for the RTL8111EP. To further reduce power consumption, the RTL8111EP also supports PCIe L1.Off and L1.Snooze.

The RTL8111EP supports Microsoft Wake Packet Detection (WPD) to provide Wake-Up Frame information to the OS, e.g., PatternID, OriginalPacketSize, SavedPacketSize, SavedPacketOffset, etc. WPD helps prevent unwanted/unauthorized wake-up of a sleeping computer.

Note: In Wake Packet Detection (WPD) the NIC is required to capture at least the first 128 bytes of the packet; causing the network to wake and generating a status indication to the operating system.

The RTL8111EP supports ‘RealWoW!’ technology that enables remote wake-up of a sleeping PC through the Internet. This feature allows PCs to reduce power consumption by remaining in low power sleeping state until needed.

Note: The ‘RealWoW!’ service requires registration on first time use.

The RTL8111EP is fully compatible with Microsoft NDIS5, NDIS6 checksum offload (IPv4, IPv4/UDP, IPv4/TCP, IPv6/TCP, IPv6/UDP) and Segmentation Task-offload (Large send and Giant send) features, and supports IEEE 802 IP Layer 2 priority encoding and IEEE 802.1Q Virtual bridged Local Area Network (VLAN). The above features contribute to lowering CPU utilization, especially benefiting performance when in operation on a network server.

The RTL8111EP supports four Receive Side Scaling (RSS) queues to hash incoming TCP connections and load-balance received data processing across multiple CPUs. RSS improves the number of transactions/connections per second, for increased network throughput.

The RTL8111EP also supports Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) which is a hardware virtualization technology for the efficient transferring of network traffic to a virtualized host OS. The VMQ technology uses hardware packet filter to deliver packets from an external virtual machine network directly to virtual machines, which reduces the overhead of routing packets and copying from the management operating system to the virtual machine.

Note: RTL8111EP Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ) is only functional in computers running Windows Server 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V server role installed.

The RTL8111EP supports Protocol offload. It offloads some of the most common protocols to NIC hardware in order to prevent spurious wake-up and further reduce power consumption. It can offload ARP (IPv4) and NS (IPv6) protocols while in the D3 power saving state.

The RTL8111EP supports the ECMA (European Computer Manufacturers Association) proxy for sleeping hosts standard. The standard specifies maintenance of network connectivity and presence via proxies in order to extend the sleep duration of higher-powered hosts. It handles some network tasks on behalf of the host, allowing the host to remain in sleep mode for longer periods. Required and optional behavior of an operating proxy includes generating reply packets, ignoring packets, and waking the host.

The RTL8111EP supports IEEE 802.3az-2010, also known as Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE). IEEE 802.3az-2010 operates with the IEEE 802.3 Media Access Control (MAC) Sublayer to support operation in Low Power Idle mode. When the Ethernet network is in low link utilization, EEE allows systems on both sides of the link to save power.

Alert Specification Format (ASF 2.0) is supported to provide system manageability in OS-absent environments. The ASF defines remote control and alerting interfaces that serve managed PCs in OS-absent states. With the ASF capability, we are able to minimize on-site IT maintenance, to improve system availability, and also to control power management remotely.

The Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware (DASH) initiative is a suite of specifications that takes full advantage of the DMTF’s Web Services for Management (WS-Management) specification – delivering standards-based Web services management for desktop and mobile client systems. Through the DASH initiative, the RTL8111EP provides the next generation of standards for secure out-of-band and remote management of desktop and mobile systems.

The RTL8111EP also features inter-connect PCI Express technology. PCI Express is a high-bandwidth, low-pin-count, serial, interconnect technology that offers significant improvements in performance over conventional PCI and also maintains software compatibility with existing PCI infrastructure. The device embeds an adaptive equalizer in the PCIe PHY for ease of system integration and excellent link quality. The equalizer enables the length of the PCB traces to reach 40 inches.

The RTL8111EP supports PCIe 3.0 LTR (Latency Tolerance Reporting). The LTR mechanism enables Endpoints to report the service latency requirements for Memory Reads/Writes and CPU will enter appropriate sleep state (Cx) based on the LTR value.

The RTL8111EP is suitable for multiple market segments and emerging applications, such as desktop, mobile, workstation, server, communications platforms, and embedded applications.

Features

Hardware

• Integrated 10/100/1000M transceiver
• Auto-Negotiation with Next Page capability
• Supports PCI Express 1.1
• Supports pair swap/polarity/skew correction
• Crossover Detection & Auto-Correction
• Wake-On-LAN and ‘RealWoW!’ Technology (remote wake-up) support
• Supports 32-set 128-byte Wake-Up Frame pattern exact matching
• Supports Microsoft WPD (Wake Packet Detection)
• Supports Magic Packet Wake-Up
• Microsoft NDIS5, NDIS6 Checksum Offload (IPv4, IPv4/UDP, IPv4/TCP, IPv6/TCP, IPv6/UDP) and Segmentation Task-offload (Large send v1 and Large send v2) support
• Supports ECMA-393 ProxZzzy Standard for sleeping hosts
• Supports Full Duplex Flow Control (IEEE 802.3x)
• Supports jumbo frame to 9K bytes
• Fully compatible with IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u, IEEE 802.3ab
• Supports IEEE 802.1P Layer 2 Priority Encoding
• Supports IEEE 802.1Q VLAN tagging
• Supports IEEE 802.3az-2010 (EEE)
• Embedded OTP memory to replace external EEPROM
• Supports 25MHz or 48MHz Oscillator
• Supports 16Mbytes External Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) Flash
• Transmit/Receive on-chip buffer support
• Supports power down/link down power saving/PHY disable mode
• Built-in switching regulator
• Supports PCI MSI (Message Signaled Interrupt) and MSI-X
• Supports Virtual Machine Queue (VMQ)
• Supports Receive-Side Scaling (RSS)
• Supports Protocol Offload (ARP & NS)
• Supports Customized LEDs (includes blinking frequency and duty cycle)
• Supports 1-Lane 2.5Gbps PCI Express Bus
• Supports LTR (Latency Tolerance Reporting)
• Supports PCIe L1.Off and L1.Snooze
• Supports hardware ECC (Error Correction Code) function
• Supports hardware CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check) function
• Supports Alert Specification Format 2.0 (ASF 2.0)
• Supports Realtek RealManage Remote Management Technology (DASH 1.1 compatible)
• Single/Dual MAC/IP support for DASH
• Supports USB redirection over PCIe
• 48-pin QFN Green package
• Supports SNMP MIB 2, Ethernet-like MIB, and Ethernet MIB

Application

• PCI Express 10/100/1000M Ethernet on Motherboard, Notebook, or Embedded system

Specifications