From owner-freebsd-net Thu Feb 8 9:46:27 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Received: from cgaylord.async.vt.edu (e028121.vtacs.vt.edu [63.164.28.121]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F54E37B503 for ; Thu, 8 Feb 2001 09:46:08 -0800 (PST) Received: by cgaylord.async.vt.edu (Postfix, from userid 1000) id 45465FE; Thu, 8 Feb 2001 12:46:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 8 Feb 2001 12:46:06 -0500 From: Clark Gaylord To: Andrea Venturoli Cc: freebsd-net@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Meditation on rl driver Message-ID: <20010208124605.A22600@cgaylord.async.vt.edu> References: <200102081432.f18EW3113944@relay.flashnet.it> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i In-Reply-To: <200102081432.f18EW3113944@relay.flashnet.it>; from ml.ventu@flashnet.it on Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 03:32:03PM -0500 Sender: owner-freebsd-net@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Thu, Feb 08, 2001 at 03:32:03PM -0500, Andrea Venturoli wrote: > So I issued an ifconfig and saw that the card was set to media autoselect (NONE). > I tried with > > ifconfig rl1 inet 10.0.0.6 netmask 255.0.0.0 media 10baseT/UTP mediaopt half-duplex > > but it would not accept the last parameter. > I ended up with the following in rc.conf: > > ifconfig_rl1="inet 10.0.0.6 netmask 255.0.0.0 media 10baseT/UTP mediaopt > -full-duplex" > ... > _ has anything changed in the rl driver after 4.1-RELEASE? It used to be the case that mediaopt half-duplex worked. It stopped working at some point (I don't recall exactly when ... somewhere between 4.0 and 4.2 I think), but it seems that this is the default (as it should be) if you specify 10baseT/UTP. I would be concerned that the -full-duplex setting might actually be setting to *use* full-duplex, not turn it off. Check the src on this; clearly the man page is just plain wrong. > _ autoselecting the media obviously does not work correctly, does it? Autoselect of duplex gets it right, in general, about 51.045% of the time, and should be considered an Evil Spawn of Satan (ESS). When you say full-duplex doesn't work are you saying that the driver barfs at the mention of it or that your NIC does not work properly when it is set (which is correct, as your modem is hdx). Does it accept the parameter when the card is set to 100 (while fdx 10 does exist, it is less common, and I have seen drivers/NICs that only support fdx at 100Mbps)? > _ if two devices are connected and one speaks half-duplex, the other full-duplex, shouldn't > they fail to communicate at all? No, but load would cause this to fail. Basically fdx means "ignore collisions;" as long as you wouldn't have had a collision, all works fine. But, of course, at high loads, the hdx is going to expect the fdx guy to respect collisions. You'll get a lot of errors when duplex is wrong, but it will work some at light load. It does really great things to TCP window sizes too. > Is the hang-up after a while and under heavy load normal? I have no problem with my DSL modem under various loads, but I can't say that I have sustained very high loads (e.g. ttcp tests) for more than twenty minutes or so. Most DSL modems follow the long-standing definition of modem (i.e.: 'see "suck"'). -- Clark K. Gaylord Blacksburg, Virginia USA cgaylord@vt.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-net" in the body of the message