PC Routers

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 10:39:43PM -0500, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
> Sure. That assumes there is another switch on the network. For many
> people, that isn't the case. They'll just use the switch in the
> router.
> 
> By the way, I found out that just because modern switches can
> auto-negotiate the connection doesn't mean that it works as you'd
> expect in all cases. I had installed a consumer-grade D-Link gigabit
> switch at the colo facility in Toronto where we have some servers so
> that we could connect multiple servers to one switch port. Even
> though the colo facility provided a 100Mb/s port, the switch was a
> gigabit switch, and all the servers had gigabit NICs, the best we
> could manage on the servers was 10Mb/s. The colo facility's Cisco
> switch was configured to be 100Mb/s and consumer-grade switches like
> the D-Link apparently don't auto-negotiate down to 100Mb/s as I
> thought it would. It fell to the lowest common denominator, 10Mb/s.

It's more likely that it just didn't know what to do when the other
switch didn't want to negotiate.

I personally hate when people turn off autonegotiation, but some
networking people seem to think they know better and that forcing 100mbit
full duplex because that's what they want is better.  They then forget
to bother telling other people that that is the setting you must use.

Of course a consumer switch generally has no settings, so it always
negotiates.  Not a good combination.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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