They are the best Ethernet trolls around. Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Jan 27, 2015 7:42 PM, "Forrest Christian (List Account)" < [email protected]> wrote:
> 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 >>> >> >> >
