[Gllug] NetGear fa311 NIC only half duplex

[Thomas Robinson]

-----Original Message-----
From: Kim Hawtin [mailto:kim at aldigital.co.uk]
Sent: 23 January 2002 18:30
To: gllug at linux.co.uk
Subject: Re: [Gllug] NetGear fa311 NIC only half duplex


> Has anyone had experience with Netgear NIC's not running in full
duplex
> mode? Our RH6.2 (2.219 kernel) server reports from dmesg that the NIC
is
> only at half duplex.

my experience, frustration and bias follows.

i have had this problem on several occasions;

 - it happens with HP ProCurve Switch 2424M 10/100 Switches,
 - it does happen to other 10/100 switches,
 - the card works fine in 10Mbit mode,
 - the card can not determine the duplex mode, so assumes half.
 - i have not found a way around this, other than getting a switch that
   works properly. 
 - this does not appear to be a fault with the card, as
   other cards fail to talk to this model switch properly too.
 - it happens under windows, linux, freebsd, openbsd ...

FIX;

 - hard set the port on the switch in full-duplex mode 100Mbit,
 - and hard set the card in full-duplex mode 100Mbit,
 or
 - hard set the port on the switch in 10Mbit,
 - and hard set the card in 10Mbit.


---
Thanks for the above: Here's what I did in the meantime:

o I built the natsemi driver and installed that with the pci_scan module
(allows you to specify options in /etc/modules.conf - so far I can't
find how to do this with the fa311 driver - natsemi and pci_scan also
allow the use of mii-diag for diagnosing the interface).

o had to reset the port on the switch (AvSys 1200) to auto negotiate
before the interface would actually complete a negotiation successfully.
Then reset the switch port to 100baseTx. The link stays at 100baseTx-FD
(full duplex) now and dmesg reports it as such.

I thought I had it cracked until yesterday when I notice that eth0 on
the server in question had hung! I've recycled the interface and all
seemed well until again this morning when my colleague found eth0
hanging and recycled it.

Latest question is: Does anyone know of incompatibilities of the natsemi
driver for the Netgear FA311 card running on older kernels (namely
2.2.19). Apparently the natsemi driver is the default install for this
NIC with Red Hat releases that default to kernel 2.4.x on install.

Any clues are appreciated.

Regards,

Tom

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