RTLPlayground/doc/l2.md

L2

The RTL827x provides access and configuration options to an L2 table that is used to associate device-MACs with ports on which those devices can be reached in the LAN. The code so far configures automatic learning and uses a default for aging of the learned addresses.

L2 Tables

Access to the tables is done using table access registers. The same access registers also provide access to the VLAN configuration tables. An idea of how the table works can be gained from the RTL8369 Datasheet section 8.17 and in particular table 20.

The central table register is RTL837X_TBL_CTRL(0x5cac).

Register RTL837X_TBL_CTRL bytes: EE EE TT CC
EE: Entry
TT: Table type
CC: Command (Bit 0: Execute, Bit 1: Write)
TT: 04: TBL_L2_UNICAST, 03: TBL_VLAN

An entry is retrieved from the tables by setting the data in registers to the desired entry filter, then executing a table command by writing to RTL837X_TBL_CTRL with execute bit 0 set, table type set and entry identifier (VLAN-Id or hash for L2). Data will be fetched from the table and is available once the execute bit has been cleared by the ASIC. Data then is in the output data registers

#define RTL837x_L2_DATA_OUT_A	0x5ccc
#define RTL837x_L2_DATA_OUT_B	0x5cd0
#define RTL837x_L2_DATA_OUT_C	0x5cd4

DATA_OUT_A   DATA_OUT_B   L2_DATA_OUT_C
M2 M3 M4 M5  fV VV M0 M1  xx xF xx gg

M0-M5: 6 bytes of MAC, M0 is MSB
V: 12 bits of VLAN-ID
f: bit 5 set: Entry is valid, otherwise stale
   bit 6: bit 0 of port-number
   bit 7: bit 1 of port-number
g: bit 0: bit 2 of port-number
   bit 1: bit 3 of port-number (MSB)
   bit 2: bit 0 of entry-age
   bit 3: bit 1 of entry-age
   bit 4: bit 2 of entry-age (MSB)
F: bit 0: entry is static(1) or learned (0)

The next entry can be now found in RTL837x_TBL_DATA_0 (entry = RTL837x_TBL_DATA_0_bits(0-11) + 1), which can be used to get the next entry by writing this value to RTL837X_TBL_CTRL and executing again for the given table type. This entry number is probably a hash, for which the algorithm is unknown.

Deleting the entire L2 table is done by checking and setting 0x53dc to 0x0, then writing 0x00010000 to register RTL837x_L2_TBL_CTRL and waiting until the bit 16 that was set has cleared.

API support in the code

The RTLPlayground code provides support for reading the L2 tables from the ASIC and flushing the table in order to quickly forget the learned entries.

> l2
        MAC       VLAN    type    port
3c:18:a0:7e:11:00 0x0001  learned 5
1c:2a:a3:23:00:02 0x0001  learned 7