The most ironic thing about my whole rant issue - and I just realized it late last night.
When I finally *want* a 100Mb/s link, it gives me a 10Mb/s one, and refuses to play nice at 100Mb/s - only 10. -forrest On Tue, Jan 27, 2015 at 5:09 PM, George Skorup (Cyber Broadcasting) < [email protected]> wrote: > That Base-II you replaced for me made this quite obvious. It would not > work in any port unless forced to 10HD. That's the one I did all of the > polarity swapping on and nothing would make it work with auto-nego. Worked > perfectly fine plugged into any old dumb or managed switch. Nothing > MikroTik worked. Well besides forcing 10 half. > > > On 1/26/2015 4:19 PM, Forrest Christian (List Account) wrote: > >> 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 >> > >
