On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 9:17 PM, Greg Keller <g...@keller.net> wrote: > Essentially, once the port > has a physical link light it may take a while before spanning tree allows > traffic to actually flow through the port. Longer than a typical timeout.
The time taken to activate the link is around 60s, but I've been told that it can be even higher. I've seen many times laptops randomly not getting addresses via DHCP because the DHCP timeout and the STP time on a Cisco switch were both around 60s - makes for very frustrating network diagnostic. > When loading/reloading the driver there seems to be an instantaneous drop > of the link that forces a new delay cycle. Most likely the PXE stack doesn't reset the link; the link is up soon after the computer is powered on so, by the time the POST has finished, the link is active. Again most likely, the Linux driver does a link reset as part of the initialization; I remember that the 3c59x driver was changed ~6years ago to not do this anymore (at Don Becker's suggestion, IIRC) and it would allow the established link to remain active, making DHCP succeed all the time. Bogdan _______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
