VIC(4)                    OpenBSD Programmer's Manual                   VIC(4)

NAME
     vic - VMware Virtual Network Interface Controller driver

SYNOPSIS
     vic* at pci?

DESCRIPTION
     The vic driver provides support for the virtual NIC available in virtual
     machines by VMware.  It appears as a simple Ethernet device but is actu-
     ally a virtual network interface to the underlying host operating system.

     This driver supports the vmxnet driver protocol, as an alternative to the
     emulated pcn(4) interface also available in the VMware environment.  The
     vic driver is optimized for the virtual machine, it can provide advanced
     capabilities depending on the underlying host operating system and the
     physical network interface controller of the host.

     Unlike the capabilities of physical network interface controllers, these
     capabilities may change after reboot.  The list of available capabilities
     is printed by the kernel on startup, which could be:

           SG      Transmit scatter-gather lists are supported (required).
           CSUM4   IPv4 TCP/UDP checksum offload is supported (ignored).
           CSUM    IPv4/IPv6/TCP/UDP checksum offload is supported (ignored).
           HDMA    Can map high DMA memory.
           TOE     TCP offload engine available (ignored).
           TSO     TCP segmentation offload supported (ignored).
           TSOHW   Software-based TSO supported (ignored).
           VPROM   Virtual PROM available, used for the MAC address.
           VLANTx  VLAN tagging available (ignored).
           VLANRx  VLAN untagging available (ignored).
           VLANSW  Software-based VLAN tagging on the host (ignored).

     The vic driver supports the following media types:

     autoselect  Enable autoselection of the media type and options.  The
                 driver always uses the fastest available speed and the media
                 options provided by the underlying host of the virtual ma-
                 chine.

     For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

HARDWARE
     The vic driver supports VMware Virtual NICs provided by the following
     known products:

           o   VMware ESX Server
           o   VMware GSX Server 2.5 and newer
           o   VMware Server

DIAGNOSTICS
     vic%d: I/O mapping of register space failed  A fatal initialization error
     has occurred.

     vic%d: interrupt mapping failed  A fatal initialization error has oc-
     curred.

     vic%d: couldn't establish interrupt  A fatal initialization error has oc-
     curred.

     vic%d: watchdog timeout  The device has stopped responding to the net-
     work, or there is a problem with the network connection (host cable).

SEE ALSO
     arp(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), pcn(4),
     hostname.if(5), ifconfig(8)

AUTHORS
     The vic driver was written by Reyk Floeter <reyk@openbsd.org>.

OpenBSD 4.0                    December 20, 2005                             2
