Supported Ethernet Hardware

This page shall give an overview of the Ethernet hardware, that is natively supported by the EtherCAT master. The listed Ethernet drivers come with the EtherCAT master sources and are EtherCAT-enabled versions of their standard-kernel-counterparts, and therefore are able to drive the same set of hardware.

Generic Ethernet Driver

Since version 1.5, there is a generic Ethernet driver among the native ones, that spans all Ethernet devices supported by the Linux kernel. Although it is not usable with realtime patches like RTAI (because it uses the lower network stack layers), it runs perfetly with realtime preemption.

Native Ethernet Drivers

These natively supported drivers and their corresponding hardware are mentioned below:

8139too - RealTek 8139C (or compatible) Fast-Ethernet chipsets.
e1000 - Intel PRO/1000 Gigabit-Ethernet chipsets.
e100 - Intel PRO/100 Fast-Ethernet chipsets.
r8169 - RealTek 8169/8168/8101 Gigabit-Ethernet chipsets.

The below tables show for each master version, which drivers are available for which kernel version.

Legend

X: The driver is available and is known to run stable.
?: The driver is basically available, but there are no long-time experiences, or the driver has not proven to run in a production environment.
-: The driver was not patched for that kernel version.

EtherCAT Master 1.5.0 (devel)

	8139too	e1000	e100	r8169
2.6.13	X	X	-	-
2.6.17	X	-	-	-
2.6.18	?	?	-	-
2.6.19	X	-	-	-
2.6.20	-	X	X	-
2.6.22	X	X	-	-
2.6.23	X	-	-	-
2.6.24	X	X	X	?
2.6.25	X	-	-	-
2.6.26	X	X	X	-
2.6.27	X	-	X	-
2.6.28	X	-	X	?
2.6.29	X	-	X	?
2.6.31	X	-	-	-

EtherCAT Master 1.4.0

	8139too	e1000
2.6.13	X	X
2.6.17	X	-
2.6.18	?	?
2.6.19	X	-
2.6.20	-	X
2.6.22	X	X
2.6.23	X	-
2.6.24	X	X

EtherCAT Master 1.3.2

	8139too	e1000
2.6.13	X	X
2.6.17	X	-
2.6.18	?	?
2.6.19	X	-
2.6.20	-	X