Juniper e3k with ports limitied to 100Mbit and re NICs on MSI MoBo: problems with duplex negotiation (Hetzner host provider discard FreeBSD support due this bug)

[sthaug at nethelp.no]

> > I'm not surprised that it doesn't work with autonegotian if autonegotian
> > is disabled.
> > If Linux does full-duplex without autonegotiation then _they_ do it wrong
> > and Hetzner shouldn't rely on wrong behavour.
>   As far as I understand, Linux does full-duplex without
> autonegotiation because it is say to do full-duplex (like FreeBSD's
> "ifconfig re0 media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex"). Is it violation
> of standard too -- manual configuration of FD?

Manual configuration of FD for 100 Mbps is not in violation of the
standards. What the standards say (for 100 Mbps) is that *if* you have
one end configured for autonegotiation *and* the other end is manually
configured for full duplex, the autoneg end should end up as half duplex
(with the inevitable errors as a result). This may be counterintuitive,
but it's the way the standard is written.

For Gigabit Ethernet autonegotiation is *required* by the standard, as
other people already have pointed out.

Steinar Haug, Nethelp consulting, sthaug at nethelp.no