I wrote this small patch a while back, to fix auto-negotiation on Broadcom NICs with BCM5708S chip. Using fixed media/speed works fine with the card, which is ideal for servers.
The patch is based on benno’s patch for brgphy(4), but makes the hack specific for the BCM5708S chip. It seems like “mii_ticks” does not kick in at auto-negotiation phase.
David @ Broadcom (the maintainer of the FreeBSD drivers), mentioned an underlying problem, and wants to address this rather than applying hacks like this. Until the issue is fixed, applying this patch manually does the trick.
Link to patch: freebsd-brgphy.c-bce5708S-autonegotiation.diff.
As a side note, I suggest buying an bge(4) based card, rather than a bce(4) card, if you have a choice. Sepherosa Ziehau mentioned the firmware in bce(4) based cards are not as good, and is not near using the cards potential.
See kern/118238 for more info.
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