vr(4) duplex problems

[Mike Silbersack]

On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Daniel O'Connor wrote:

> I have 4.8 vintage PC with an Epox 8K9A9I motherboard
> (http://www.epox.com/html/motherboard.asp?product=EP-8K9AI&lang=1) which has
> an onboard vr(4) interface.
>
> I find that if the interface auto negotiates, it picks 100Mbit/FDX which
> matches the switch, but transfers are very bursty. If I force half duplex 100
> or 10 mbit it works as I would expect (unbursty..). 10mbit/FDX is bursty as
> well.
>
> Does anyone have any patches, or ideas/suggestions?
>
> Thanks.
>
> --
> Daniel O'Connor software and network engineer

Well, there have been a few reports of similar problems.  However, back
when those reports came in, there were a bunch of other problems with our
if_vr driver, so everyone gave up and switched network cards before we
could get to the duplex autoneg problem. :)

If possible, I'd like you to try some other brands of 100/FDX hubs and see
if autonegotiation works properly; this would help tell us if the problem
is general, or specific to that card.

Also, can you post the dmesg output relating to your card?  I'm curious
which PHY device you have.

Mike "Silby" Silbersack