[88048] in North American Network Operators' Group
Redux - RE: Problems connectivity GE on Foundry BigIron to Cisco
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sam Stickland)
Thu Jan 19 08:56:00 2006
Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2006 13:55:22 +0000 (GMT Standard Time)
From: Sam Stickland <sam_ml@spacething.org>
To: nanog@nanog.org
Cc: David Prall <dcp@dcptech.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.WNT.4.64.0601160105200.2524@p4-2800>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Hi,
I've had a lot of emails asking me how I was getting on with this, so I
figured I'd do a quick redux of the issues for the archives.
One of the main problem actually turned out to be a damaged strand in the
CAT5e underfloor cabling, which meant that the connection would work at
10/100, but not at 1000 (GE) because of the use of extra pairs on GE. So
leaving comments about castrating the cabling the engineer who assured me
it had tested fine aside ;) the other problems we encountered were:
Foundry's GE auto-negotiation seems very tempermental.
Another engineer here just told there's a connection (on SX/MM) between a
Foundry BigIron and clients Dell switch in the network where both ends
only get a link light when the Foundry is configured to neg-full-auto
(Autonegotiation first, if failed try non-autonegotiation). auto-gig
(Autonegotiation) and neg-off (Non-autonegotiation) don't work! Only
neg-full-auto on which the connection is fine and stable.
We ditched the copper GBIC and used a 1000Base-SX to 1000Base-TX
convertor. The foundry won't form a real link (from a fixed SX/SC blade)
with the 1000Base-SX convertor until "gig-default auto-gig" is entered.
With the default settings both ends get a link light but the Foundry never
sees any mac-addresses.
The cisco 2950T does support auto MDI/MDI-X on the gigabit copper ports
dispite this not being mentioned in the any switch specification I could
find. I never did have any luck with a GE cross-over cable (even not using
the damaged underfloor cabling).
Dispite never being able to get a link-light between the Foundry Copper
GBIC and the cisco 2950T, I've since found another point in our network,
using exactly the same model GBIC in this configuration, that's working
fine. The GBIC has since been placed back into a cisco 6500 where it's
working fine (hooked at to a 10/100/1000 port on another cisco 6500).
So, multi-vendor Copper GE - not always as easy as it sounds!
Sam
On Mon, 16 Jan 2006 sam_ml@spacething.org wrote:
>
> Hopefully the cisco copper GBIC supports Auto-MDI though, so a straight cable
> should be good.
>
> S
>
> On Sun, 15 Jan 2006, David Prall wrote:
>
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>> GigE 1000Base-T requires all 4 pairs of wire. Auto-MDI is not supported on
>> the 2950 series, so it won't handle this automagically. I would test with
>> speed set to 100 if the foundry can support 10/100/1000 with the Copper
>> GBIC. Put the two next to each other and test with 1000Base-T crossover
>> cable, removing all the extra stuff if that doesn't work.
>>
>> 1000Base-T requires that pairs 1 and 4 are also crossed along with 2 and 3.
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossover_cable
>>
>> David
>>
>> - --
>> David C Prall dcp@dcptech.com http://dcp.dcptech.com
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On
>>> Behalf Of Mark Smith
>>> Sent: Sunday, January 15, 2006 5:44 PM
>>> To: Randy Bush
>>> Cc: dhubbard@dino.hostasaurus.com; sam_ml@spacething.org;
>>> nanog@nanog.org
>>> Subject: Re: Problems connectivity GE on Foundry BigIron to
>>> Cisco 2950T
>>>
>>>
>>> Hi Randy,
>>>
>>> On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 11:10:04 -1000
>>> Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>> You are using a crossover cable right?
>>>>>> I'm having a right mare trying to get a Foundry BigIron to
>>>>>> connect up to a cisco 2950T, via Gigabit copper.
>>>>
>>>> i was under the impression that gige spec handled crossover
>>>> automagically
>>>>
>>>
>>> According to "Ethernet, The Definitive Guide", that feature is an
>>> optional part of the spec.
>>>
>>> One thing I've heard people encounter is that if they use a cross-over
>>> cable, which probably really implies a 100BASE-TX cross-over, then the
>>> ports only go to 100Mbps. A Gig-E rated straight through, in
>>> conjunction
>>> with the automatic crossover feature, was necessary to get to GigE.
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Mark.
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> "Sheep are slow and tasty, and therefore must remain
>>> constantly
>>> alert."
>>> - Bruce Schneier, "Beyond Fear"
>>>
>>
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>
