Getting an A4308A to run 100BT Vs. 10 Base..

[Ronan O'Doherty]

Just installed an A4308A card in a J210 running 10.20. Loaded drivers from 1st app CD, but it will not run in 100BT mode, only 10BT..If you need additional answers, just let me know..

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Ronan,

Could you post the output from lanscan, ioscan -kfnClan, and lanadmin -x N (where n is the instance or PPA number of the card, from lanscan)?

Thanks,


Pete

[Enrico P.]

Hi,
have you tried with

lanadmin -S 100 ?

Check with SAM or lanadmin tools your card' s settings.

Enrico.

[doug mielke]

1st question is 'what's this connected to'
and is autonegotiation set, you need to know on both sides.

You can try setting one or both sides to 100, no negotiation.

also, a big show stopper can be incompatabilities between vendors and 100 full duplex. They all seem to deny this, but we've proven some of them. Last note, most sniffers are no help here, since negotiation is at too low a level.

[Enrico P.]

Hi,
check also the switch port settings.

Enrico.

[Ken Hubnik_2]

Do you have autonegoite turned on?? If so, I would hardcode the speed (force it) to be 100 on the server and the swith port.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Ronan,

The A4308A is a 100Base-T EISA adapter so it should run 100 Mhz.
You need to determine just what instance the NIC is - use
ioscan -kfnC lan
to determine it's PPA #
Then run lanadmin in it menu mode because in 10.2 the PPA does not necessarily match the NMID. Go to lan & it will default to a specific NMID at the top line. Do display & the description field will tell you the lanX designation. Then you can select nmid option on menu to toggle through all available NMIDs. When you find the correct lanX, just note the actual NMID value & you can use that in the
lanadmin -X 100FD Y
command where Y=NMID #
That should set the 100 Mhz full-duplex you would use.

HTH,
Jeff

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi (again) Ronan,

I just realized there's a much easier way to match NMID to PPA# - just run
lanscan
It gives both lanX & NMID for all NICs in it's output. Once you have the proper NMID then you can run the lanadmin command line to set the card up.

Also don't forget that the switch port should be set & locked to the same settings & I'd also recommend you edit the appropriate /etc/rc.config.d/?????conf file to set that speed on all subsequent boots.

HTH,
Jeff

[Steven E. Protter]

This and many other HP NIC cards will work better and at correct speed if the switch(if configurable) is set to the desired speed, explicit. Do not use autonegotiate on the switch.

You can hard code your desired settings in the configuration files in /etc/rc.config.d/

for newer pci cards the file is hpbtlanconf
for older hpgsc cards its hpgs hpgsclanconf

The syntax is just like using the lanadmin command.

Here is my hpbtlanconf file as an example(attached)

SEP

[Suresh Patoria]

Check the ur system wherever connected is that also supporting 100BT, if all things are file then do the following thigs,

1.)ur lan card installed or not through the ioscan -funC lan command

2.) If it is properly installed than run the lanadmin -x

if it not display the 100BT and you can change through lanadmin -X 100BaseT

then check the mode through the lanadmin -x commnad

[Pete Randall]

Hello? . . . . Ronan? Are you out there?

[John Bolene]

you need to run lanadmin and set the card to half duplex 100

then the router/switch port has to be locked at 100 half-duplex, my lan folks were not happy to do this, but after much complaining, they finally did it

[Angus Crome]

I agree with Mr. Bolene above. We never could get our cards to go to Full Duplex. Once we set the Switch to 100 HD, they work very well.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Note that the maximum setting for any of the EISA network cards is 100HD; they cannot be set to 100FD. You should also hard-set the matching switch-port to 100HD.

[Jeff Schussele]

Well you learn something here every day. Thanks for the info guys - it's duly filed.
Thankfully I've never had to run a NIC out of an EISA bus, so I've never bumped into this.

I still think the main obstacle here is that many people forget that in 10.2 one must use the NMID which rarely - if ever - matches the PPA.

Later,
Jeff

[rick jones]

IIRC, the EISA 100BT card was "lacking" in some areas. I cannot recall if it couldn't autoneg, or if it couldn't do full-duplex. It was one or the other of those.... ah, the internal search has completed...

Actually, the A4308A supported _neither_ full-duplex, nor autonegotiation. It did support auto-sensing.

So, trying to set 100FD would not work. If the other side (ie the switch) was in autoneg mode, the spec would required that it should drop into half-duplex when autoneg failed. I've always thought that autoneg and autosense were separate things, but perhaps they are joined, and the switch, upon sensing (as it were) that the remote didn't autoneg decided it didn't autosense either.

That or perhaps the cable isn't quite "there" for 100 Mbps speeds?

The really simplistic question about making sure the NIC is connected to something that can do 100 Mbps is there too :)

How Autoneg is supposed to work:

When both sides of the link are set to autoneg, they will "negotiate"
the duplex setting and select full duplex if both sides can do
full-duplex.

If one side is hardcoded and not using autoneg, the autoneg process
will "fail" and the side trying to autoneg is required by spec to use
half-duplex mode.

If one side is using half-duplex, and the other is using full-duplex,
sorrow and woe is the usual result.

So, the following table shows what will happen given various settings
on each side:

Auto Half Full

Auto Happiness Lucky Sorrow

Half Lucky Happiness Sorrow

Full Sorrow Sorrow Happiness

Happiness means that there is a good shot of everything going
well. Lucky means that things will likely go well, but not because you
did anything correctly :) Sorrow means that there _will_ be a duplex
mis-match.

On the side running half-uplex you will see various errors and
probably a number of late collisions. On the side running full-duplex
you will see things like FCS errors.

[Ronan O'Doherty]

Tried a couple of the earlier responses and had no luck..

Please see attached lanscan info..

[Jeff Schussele]

You need to run

lanadmin -X 100HD 4

To set 100 half-duplex.
Evidently cards in the EISA bus are incapable of 100FD - only 100HD.

Don't forget to hard set the switch for 100HD to avoid auto-negotiation that could result in 10HD.

HTH,
Jeff