In many cases they are autonegotiation issues, but those seem to be mostly resolved, especially if your end devices are using newer NICs with updated drivers. In the case of this morning we're dealing with devices that only run 10/half and the switch is hard-coded for 10/half. Quite a mess but it's not consistent and we're still trying to discover all of the commonalities.
Out of six or seven locations that were upgraded last night, three reported problems this morning and all problems related to the same type of PC with the same type of NIC. However, none of the other locations that also have this same PC and NIC have problems. To make it more frustrating, the problems often don't show up immediately, but instead show up several days later. Assuming good code, I'm now an advocate of using auto everywhere unless you need to fix a specific problem. In that case, use 100/Half or 10/half. I never recommend hard-coding 100/Full on newer switches like the 2950 and 6500. It might work but you're just asking for problems. With the majority of the NICs in our PCs, if you hardset both sides to 100/full you will get a duplex mismatch when the PC NIC falls back to half duplex when autonegotiation fails. This behavior is relatively new, and was not present in the 2924XL, the forerunner of the 2950. Just last year we added a bunch of newer Cisco switches to our network and it took quite a while to figure out that most of our new connectivity problems were due to this change in philosophy within Cisco switches. John >>> "Reimer, Fred" 7/23/03 12:31:16 PM >>> They don't happen to be autonegotiation issues, do they? Cisco used to have a nice write-up on autonegotiation troubleshooting and best practices that recommended hard-coding everything except for transient devices. Some crack-head at Cisco decided to update that recently and now I suppose their "official" stance is to use autonegotiation, ostensibly because they follow the standard correctly, so as long as everyone else does it should work! I have not met a Cisco engineer yet that agrees with that though. Hard-code your speed and duplex, unless it is for ports in an area like a conference room where you will have transient devices. Fred Reimer - CCNA Eclipsys Corporation, 200 Ashford Center North, Atlanta, GA 30338 Phone: 404-847-5177 Cell: 770-490-3071 Pager: 888-260-2050 NOTICE; This email contains confidential or proprietary information which may be legally privileged. It is intended only for the named recipient(s). If an addressing or transmission error has misdirected the email, please notify the author by replying to this message. If you are not the named recipient, you are not authorized to use, disclose, distribute, copy, print or rely on this email, and should immediately delete it from your computer. -----Original Message----- From: John Neiberger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2003 12:58 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Catalyst 2950: The Spawn of the Devil? [7:72821] All those who consider any version of this platform beware. As far as I can tell there are no reliable software versions for this switch that do not suffer from connectivity bugs. We thought 12.1(13)EA1b solved our problems so we started rolling out this version. Upon reloading we have a number of users complaining and we're not able to resolve the connectivity issue. Granted, this particular problem is between the 2950 and an old NIC but I'm sure we're not the only company with a few older NICs in the network. If you're considering replacing existing switches with the 2950 prepare yourself for deluge of conenctivity problems. You have been warned! [Side note to Cisco: How hard is it to build an access switch that works?? We're on 12.1(13)EA1b and we still have BASIC connectivity bugs??? This is ridiculous. Bugs in the more obscure portions of the code are to be expected, but shouldn't the connectivity bugs be given a little higher priority? When we buy a new switch it would be nice if *all* of our end users could actually connect to the network. Maybe we'll go back to using Nortel switches. ] -- Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=72922&t=72821 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
