Compaq NIC "Speed & Duplex" auto configuration

[Bugnon Patrick]

Hi,

We experienced connection stability problem when connecting to an Oracle database on an Oracle Server (Windows 2000 server, Compaq ML370 with NC7770 on Cisco catalyst 4006 gigabit switch. Some of the client are connected through a WAN linked to the 4006).

The connection to the server does work OK but is interrupted from time to time for a few seconds. These interruptions do not happen regularly, but more often when the network is busy. They can happen once a day or twice in half an hour and have a duration of a few seconds up to 1 minute. As every client are disconnected (Oracle connection stalled) at the same time, the problem obviously is on the server side.

Note that removing the network cable for 2 minutes on the client side is supported without network interruptions (the TCP/IP network configuration has been set accordingly).

Can it be a problem with the current "Speed & Duplex" configuration that is set to Auto?

This diagnostic is based on the many problems that are related to auto speed and duplex configuration that can be found in users forums, and on the fact that by manually changing the duplex mode or the interface speed the connections are immediately broken (it is not needed to wait on the TCP timeout connection as when unplugging the network cable).

Questions are:
- How does the adapter decide to change its duplex mode or speed settings?
- Can the adapter behavior be configured? i.e. is it possible to increase the number of connection retry before the adapter decide to auto-reconfigurate?
- Is it possible to force a Gigabit speed setting for NC7xxx series cards? Only 10 and 100 Mb/s connection speed are listed.

Thanks in advance for your ideas, experiences, inputs, or even better your answers.

Patrick

[Rob Buxton]

The NC7131 is Gigabit capable as are the NC77xx NICs.

We've certainly experienced problems with Auto Negoitation and have fixed all our Servers at both the Server and Network end.
We found cards would set to inappropriate speeds and half duplex which really had an impact on performance.

I don't know what can trigger an re-autonegotiation process.

[Jens Baumann_2]

Same here. Auto negotiation causes network connection problems, it is reproducable. Network teaming and configuration says e.g. 100/full, but copying files via network takes a lot of time (something like e.g. five minutes for a 100MB file), and manually setting the network connection to 100/full fixes it. We never leave the network speed/duplex setting at "auto".

[Zigor Buruaga · Accepted solution]

Hi,

We experienced a very similar problem with a Proliant ML580, installed with SmartStart 5.40 ( and running during months perfectly ).
In our case, that strange behaviour was due to NIC's & teaming drivers version. We updated to 6.20 version and automagically all was OK.
And other Proliant same model, same Smartart, same installation date, same function, was running OK all the time.

Kind regards,
Zigor