Network problem

[Achilles_2]

Hi all,

I have several HP A400 and 500 servers with running HPUX-11.00. I find that the traffic initiated from Cisco Catalyst switch to HP UX server come across failure rate, depending on the size of packet, bigger size suffered more. Packet with minimum size likes 100 byte was fine. For a typical 1000 byte packet, almost 30 to 40 percent packet lost.

How can I check or configure the settings in server side

Do anyone give me some advises, thanks.

Alex

[Shaikh Imran]

Hi,

Please check the speed/duplex setting from
the server side this should be
100MB/s Full Duplex manual
You can do this via sam..

Regards,

[Sunil Sharma_1]

Alex,

Run lanscan and get nmid of network card and then run #lanadmin -x nmid

this will give you spped setting of network card. If it is auto nego. on then change it ti 100MBPS Full duplex and do the same setting at switch port.

This should help..
Suni

[Shaikh Imran]

Hi,

Pls donot select
"autonegotiation=on"
This should be ..
"autonegotiation=off"
As i faced the same problem earlier on HPUX
and was told that hpux does not support
autonegotiation.


Regards,

[Achilles_2]

The servers have installed FDDI/9000. All this NICs hook up to a CISCO Catalyst 5509 switch. So they havenâ t used the auto-negotiation option.

A

[rick jones]

HP-UX most certainly does support 100Base-T Autonegotiation - on all but one (?) of the 100BT NICs, that being the old EISA 100BT NIC.

I'd not start hardcoding duplex settings until I knew that both sides (NIC and switch) were set for auto, and both sides ended-up in different settings. Per the specificiations, if autoneg fails, the side(s) doing autoneg are supposed to go into half-duplex. You cannot set one side to auto, and the other to full and expect to get a working setup. Both sides _must_ be set to the same value.

Now, if this is indeed an FDDI issue (it certainly would have been nice to have a _much_ more descriptive subject, hint, hint...) then duplex does not come into play. There, there might be some issues with FIFO's (buffers on the NIC). It would still be good to check the specific lanadmin statistics for that PPA and see what they look like. Then go back through the FDDI/9000 docs and see if there is indeed a FIFO on the NIC and if settings for it can be altered.

FWIW, 100BT (or gigabit) over fibre is _NOT_ FDDI. Nor is it FibreChannel...

[George Vidos]

Hi,

all the information submitted in this thread is highly relevant to my problem.On the server side (running HP-UX 11.11i) the NIC seems to use half-duplex 10Mbps.Which tool do you suggest to use after discovering with the instructions given earlier (lanscan to get nmid of the card and #lanadmin -x nmid to get its speed) to change the rate to 100Mbps full-duplex?

Regards,

[Steve Lewis]

Commands to read about and use:

1. pong (not ping, but pong, which is a special fddi-only command).

2. fddimon7 (well thats what it was called way back when I used FDDI on 10.20, it may be called something else now, such as:

3. fddinet

4. fddistat

5. netstat -s [ the big catch-all command ]

See http://docs.hp.com/hpux/netcom/index.html#FDDI%2f9000

FDDI is a kind of token-ring technology, not ethernet, which uses packet sizes up to 4k. The fact that you are getting problems of packets of 1k indicates possible driver issues to me. That is a problem I once had with big packets over FDDI - the system would lock up when I telneted in and did a ls -l of a large directory. It was fixed by a driver update from the FDDI card manufacturer.
So, if it is an old card, then check for later driver versions. Some of the old cards were not made by HP. Regardless of that, check the latest FDDI/9000 patches on HP-UX 11.00.
Also, start planning your upgrade to 11i.

[Shaikh Imran]

Hi George,

You can use sam & change the speed of the card to 100MBps full duplex & autonegotiation off.

Please open a new thread if possible.

Regards,

[George Vidos]

Thanks Steve,

actually I only need to change the link speed now to 100Mbps full duplex.Which command should I use?I don't have a problem with packet loss (I assume).

Many thanks

[Shaikh Imran]

Hi George,

#lanadmin -s
This will display the surrent speed
(Please not the format for speed here)
#lanadmin -S
This will change the speed
see man lanadmin for more details.

Note: the 1st is small "s" &
the second one is capital "S".

Regards,

[Steve Lewis]

George,

My previous reply was addressed to Alex, not to you. I hadn't realised Alex's question was 3 weeks old.

Your are using ethernet and as been explained, you must use the landmin command to check the speed and duplex settings of your interface.

lanadmin -x lan0 shows the settings
lanadmin -s lan0 shows the speed
lanadmin -X 100FD lan0 sets the speed and duplex

Then you cd /etc/rc.config.d and find the correct file for your driver, such as hpbase100conf and hard-code the settings for next reboot. For example:
HP_BASE100_INTERFACE_NAME[0]=lan0
HP_BASE100_STATION_ADDRESS[0]=
HP_BASE100_SPEED[0]=100FD
sets it to 100 megabits full duplex.
Then you have to telnet to your switch and do the same for the port that your server is plugged into. Then, test it with server power-down / reboot.

If you are using gigabit ethernet, then you must set the card and port to autonegotiate.

[Shaikh Imran]

Hi,

Hello Steve that's the reason i requested him to start a new thread if possible...
in my first post on today's date.


Regards,