Stefan -
Don't know much about crossover cable networking. I suspect that it's
kind of hit-or-miss ... whichever machine is turned on first gets to
decide the duplex setting, and the second one tries with or without
success to connect to it. My few attempts to network in this manner have
not gone well.
Buying cards and hubs from the same manufacturer is a nice idea, though
it may not be practical. This pretty much limits you to dealing with
Asante or Farallon, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. At the very
least I'd standardize on a single vendor for cards just so you don't go nuts.
If you're using a dumb hub, there's not much you can do to control the
duplex setting. If you're using a switch, you can configure it to a
certain duplex (probably). See the mac-mgrs archives for a wealth of
advice on switch configuration, specifically regarding the dreaded Cisco
'spanning tree' protocol which if not disabled, causes annoying "Your
AppleTalk Network is now available" messages every 30 seconds.
Personally, I've found 3d party 10/100 cards to be funky and
cantankerous -- I have a number of them, and some of them just refuse to
hold onto the duplex settings I give them. The built-in 10/100 on blue
G3's works great however, and can be forced to the duplex setting of
your choice by installing the appropriate flavor of Apple Enet Duplexer
extension. (An unsupported Apple init which you can download from
apple's web site).
Stefan Jeglinski wrote:
>
> I know this is off-topic for this list, but I also know there are
> networking gurus here, and the answers may be of general interest. So
> here goes:
>
> Given 2 computers, each of which has a 10/100 ethernet card capable
> of either half or full duplex, not necessarily from the same
> manufacturer, and without specific ethernet control software to probe
> the card(s):
>
> 1) Can the fact that the cards are from different manufacturers lead
> to difficulties in auto-negotiating 10 or 100 and/or full or half
> duplex?
>
> 2) Can the choice of manufacturer of an intervening hub or switch
> lead to the same difficulty?
>
> IOW, can there be a [crucial] advantage to selecting all cards and
> hubs/switches from the same manufacturer? If so, is this choice more
> sensitive when doing 100BT?
>
> Finally, given the same two computers, with different or identical
> cards, when connected by -only a crossover cable- (sans hub/switch),
> does the ethernet connection still reliably auto-negotiate 10 or 100
> and/or full or half duplex, given that each has 4 choices? Generally,
> given choices, the "best" connection is negotiated (100BT full?) but
> does this still happen correctly with only a crossover cable?
>
> I'm pretty ignorant about the nuts and bolts of ethernet, hence my
> questions. Hopefully the off-topic nature is not seen as a terrible
> intrusion on the normal list traffic (it -is- kinda quiet right
> now..:-)
>
> Stefan Jeglinski
>
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top of the world,
Luke Jaeger, Technology Coordinator
Disney Magazine Publishing
Northampton, Massachusetts
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Any opinions expressed in this message are my own and may not represent
the opinions of Disney Publishing, etc etc etc.
*
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