APA setting in FEC_AUTO mode...

[vtpaulson]

I have 4 100BaseTX card configurd in APA. It works fine in FEC_MANUAL mode. But if I configure in FEC_AUTO ports are not aggregating to LAN100. I am using Cisco Catalyst 3548. FEC option is enabled in CISCO switch. Can anyone tell me what may be the problem. If anyone can give CISCO settings it will be of great help.

[Bill Hassell]

100BaseT has a long history of autonegotiation failures. The technical details have to do with a couple of different standards and timing. Some combinations of cards and hubs and routers will negotiate successfully, many do not. The recommendation is to lock the ports on BOTH ends to avoid problems. The Catalyst can disable ports that have excessive errors due to mismatched duplex settings, so for reliability, I would lock the HP-UX settings to 100-full duplex as well as the router.

[vtpaulson]

Hi Bill,

Thanks for your immediate reply. BTW what do you mean by locking. I set autonegotiation ON in both sides.

Also do you think in manual mode the load sharing is the problem. Through glance I found the traffic is heavy in one card and rest of the cards are idle in the manual mode..Is it the way manual mode works!!!?

[Patrick Wallek]

What Bill means by "lock"ing the speed/duplex setting is:
1) Set the port on the Catalyst specifically to the speed and duplex that you want.
2) Edit the /etc/rc.config.d/hp???????conf file that is appropriate for you 100Mb card and specify the speed explicitly in that file so that auto-negotiate is turned off.