My 2011 at home is plagued with negotiation issues as well. It's about to get thrown in the trash.
On Mon, Jan 26, 2015 at 5:25 PM, Mike Hammett <[email protected]> wrote: > It's hard enough to get them to do modern or forward looking things, much > less 10 meg things. > > > > ----- > Mike Hammett > Intelligent Computing Solutions > http://www.ics-il.com > > <https://www.facebook.com/ICSIL> > <https://plus.google.com/+IntelligentComputingSolutionsDeKalb> > <https://www.linkedin.com/company/intelligent-computing-solutions> > <https://twitter.com/ICSIL> > > ------------------------------ > *From: *"Forrest Christian (List Account)" <[email protected]> > *To: *"af" <[email protected]> > *Sent: *Monday, January 26, 2015 4:19:52 PM > *Subject: *[AFMUG] Forrest's Monday Rant - MikroTik Ethernet Funkyness > > > As many of you have heard, I've had a bit of a irritation for quite some > time about Mikrotik's seeming inability to consistently wire their Ethernet > ports correctly for 10mb/s operation - specifically paying attention to the > correct *polarity* of the wires in the Ethernet pairs. This wreaks havoc > with devices which need the correct polarity to work, such as my > SiteMonitor Base II's. For instance, every other switchport on the > RB250GS Ethernet switch doesn't work. I don't remember if it's 1 3 and 5 > which doesn't work, or if it's 2 and 4, but it is definitely every other > one. Swapping the wires in one of the pairs fixes the problem, so I'm > sure that's the cause. > > I've tried over the years to get MikroTik to care enough to even > acknowledge the issue. Of course, the problem isn't their lack of > compliance with the standard, but instead it must be my problem instead, so > I've resolved to just dealing with the occasional need to train a customer > to try a different port. > > I should note that as far as I can tell, this isn't a common problem with > other switch vendors. In fact, I don't think I have a single non-MikroTik > device in my possession which doesn't work with the standard-complying > 10Mb/s Ethernet port in the base unit - and I have quite a variety that > I've tried. Not sure how MikroTik is so good at getting this > not-very-consistently wrong, and everyone else seems to almost always get > it right. > > But, that's not really my rant. It just provides the background. > > Over the last year or so I've slowly put together the internal network at > home and at PacketFlux out of MikroTik devices. Quite frankly, they have a > feature set I appreciate, and I can generally overlook the issues, but > they're starting to get on my nerves, the most recent ones being: > > * Routerboard 850Gx2 doesn't show master/slave configuration options in > webfig (ok this one is minor). > > * That same routerboard 850Gx2, won't link with a 10Mb/s device at all > unless you turn *off* autonegotiation and hard code it 10Mbs. Well, > except when you try to replicate it later, in which case it works fine with > autonegotiation on. Fine, be that way. Well, until hours later it > decides to not link with that exact same 10Mb/s device and you have to set > it back to not negotiate. Fortunately, hardcoding the speed seems to > always work so I'm leaving it that way. > > * Disabling advertising speeds seems to be generally non-functional on > some devices. Want to negotiate at only 10/100, so turn off 1000M > checkboxes? Fine, except the damn thing still autonegotiates at 1000M. > > And what really set me off this weekend: > > Remember that RB250GS? Well, I recently upgraded my main > development/desktop computer (much faster now, thanks), but am still moving > things off my old one. So I want it up to be able to VNC into it. In > addition, I have a newly installed Linux machine here as well. The > physical hardware for both of these devices are Dell workstations from > about the same time period. They both have 10/100 Ethernet cards which > have been autonegotiating at 100Mb/s with when plugged into a rb2011 (which > has it's own unique issues as well). > > So this weekend, I decide to move these things off the top of the r&d > bench to under it. I decide to install that RB250GS under the bench as > well to plug them into and give me a couple more spare ports, and so I get > it plugged in and linked up to another MikroTik (amazingly this link works > just fine), and then hook both dell machines (The Win7 one and the Linux > one) to the RB250GS. > > A few hours later, I copy some stuff from the old Win7 box to my new > one. Many gigs of stuff to be specific - something like 40GB or > thereabouts. Windows is nicely telling me that it's going to take 'more > than a day' and that I'm only transferring at 1MB/s (yeah 10Mb/s). WTF? > > So I get digging. The (@#*$ 250GS is only linking at 10Mb/s. Check > the other machine: 10Mb/s also. Fine. Negotiation issue. Go in, make > sure that the port is enabled for 100Mb/s. Yep. Turn off auto, force it > to 100Mbs - do the same on the computer end. Links up at 100Mb/s, Yay! > > Go back, look at the transfer speed. It's gone DOWN? How is that even > possible? Oh, yeah the fact that the thing is throwing errors at 100Mbs. > Swap cables. Swap Ports. Still no go. Finally grab the end of the cable > which is plugged into the 250GS and plug it into a spare port on the > RB850Gx2 and it works. 100Mb/s, auto negotiate, transfer speeds of 10Mb/s > between the computers. Things transfer just fine. > > And then... as a final straw, I get a response to a trouble ticket from a > customer complaining that they can't get a link with a RB493AH running > latish code on any port. No matter what the setting for negotiation is. > > Why is this even close to acceptable for a manufacturer who should be able > to catch this stuff? > > -forrest > >
