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Date:      Mon, 15 Sep 2003 18:57:49 -0400
From:      "Matthew Emmerton" <matt@compar.com>
To:        "William Wong" <willwong@samurai.com>, <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Stange NIC Problem: DFE-538TX
Message-ID:  <00f501c37bdd$371bbf20$1200a8c0@gsicomp.on.ca>
References:  <000501c37b51$e904d000$fa00a8c0@janus>

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> Hi there,
>
> I'm having an odd problem where this NIC (cheap-o, yes I know) doesn't
seem
> to work on FreeBSD correctly.  I have the same cards (even revision
models)
> in two win boxen and they work fine. 10baseT works but not 100baseT.
>
> With a normal NIC config, without explicitly setting the media to 10baseT,
> it will autosense as 100BaseT @ full-duplex, showing active.  However I
> can't ping any IP.  My switch indicates that the port is not active
either.
>
> If a 10baseT config, the switch will recognise that it's running at
> half-duplex and all seems well.
>
> I've read posts here that changes in stable may have affected this, but
I'm
> still running a 4.9-RELEASE system.
>
> If anyone has any hints to why this is happening please E-mail me.  Please
> CC directly since I'm not subscribed to this list.

Never, ever rely on the NIC and the switch to do proper auto-negotiation.
It's not just a FreeBSD thing -- Cisco has many papers outlining why
auto-negotiation doesn't work in practice.

See 'man ifconfig' for details on how to configure your card for a
particular media type upon bootup.

--
Matt Emmerton



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