Server Failure Lesson #8: Gig NICs Need AutoConfig
In the past, I have run into all kinds of problems with using auto-configuration on network devices. I have been a stickler when it comes to hard coding speed and duplex settings on pretty much anything that is plugged in to my network simply because I have run into so many problems with different hardware manufacturers implementing the auto-configuration in different ways.
Plus, there are several people out there who misunderstand how speed and duplex matching works (of which I was one). Speed and duplex matching means that the speed (10/100/1000/10000 Mbps) and the duplex (half or full duplex) on both ends of the patch cable. Where many people go awry is in the implementation of auto-configuration.
I (wrongly) believed that if I did not know what the speed and duplex was at the other end of the patch cable, all I needed to do was set my system to auto-configure and it would detect what the speed and duplex on the other end was and then set my system accordingly.
Unfortunately, what actually ended up happening was the system got confused and ended up running at a very slow speed and created a large number of collisions on the network. Nothing but trouble.
So, I figured that I would avoid the whole problem by hard coding everything and being certain.
Well, this whole plan went up in smoke when I went to my new replacement server and went to manually set the network adapters to 1000/full. There was no option for this! I had never needed to do this in the past because our old switches only went to 100/full. What is going on?
The IEEE organization decided that the 1000BASE-T standard would require auto-negotiation for all of its connections. This is why it is not available for the NIC card. So I can now forget about all of those speed/duplex mismatches.
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