From owner-freebsd-stable Wed Dec 26 15:19:14 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from rfnj.org (rfnj.org [216.239.237.194]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 70ADA37B416 for ; Wed, 26 Dec 2001 15:19:11 -0800 (PST) Received: from megalomaniac.biosys.net (megalomaniac.rfnj.org [216.239.237.200]) by rfnj.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0684F137DB; Wed, 26 Dec 2001 18:20:01 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20011226181401.00ae1ec8@rfnj.org> X-Sender: asym@rfnj.org X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Wed, 26 Dec 2001 18:18:37 -0500 To: "Peter/Los Angeles, CA" , "Sam Drinkard" , "Allen Landsidel" From: Allen Landsidel Subject: Re: 4.5 PRERELEASE - Call for testing Cc: , In-Reply-To: <011601c18e5b$cb3b16e0$245b1486@hhlaw.com> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20011226125628.00b08e10@rfnj.org> <5.1.0.14.0.20011226141409.00b02048@rfnj.org> <3C2A45F9.EBF0C148@vortex.wa4phy.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG At 02:22 PM 12/26/2001 -0800, Peter/Los Angeles, CA wrote: >Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it kind of strange that >auto-sensing/auto-negotiating must be enabled on both sides for the feature >to work a bit strange? You can't just put that slash there and treat the two things the same way.. they're not the same. Auto-sensing is a term for determining line-speed only, and was done differently by every manufacturer. This is why you'll find that auto-sense often won't work when the switch/hub is a different brand than the NICs plugged into it. Because of this problem, there arose an industry standard (called auto-negotiation) that handles negotiation of speed *and* duplex settings. >At home, I have a Netgear FS116, a 16-Port unmanaged switch. It is >auto-sensing/full-duplex 10/100Mbits/sec switch. Therefore, we cannot >control how it will behave. > >On the other hand, I have network cards on my computer which I can set to >full/half/auto/10/100, whatever combination I like, and yet, the switch will >continue to work. Same here with my Linksys EF2S16, also a 16-Port unmanaged switched. It is auto-negotiating however, not auto-sensing. AFAIK only NICs are auto-sensing; They try and "sense" the speed the hub is running at, and run at that speed themselves. >What I'm getting at is that just because one end is not set to >auto-negotiate/auto-sense that there will be no communication at all. Say, >that one end is set manually, and the other end is automatic. The automatic >end will set itself to the parameters of the one that is manually set. This >is how my network works. Thus, I don't believe that both ends, need to be >set the same way in order to work in this scenario. For auto-negotiation you are absolutely correct. Setting it manually on just one end is the right way to do it, and often times, the only way to do it. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message