How to increase the e1000g0 interface speed in Solaris?

gsrungav · August 4, 2014, 5:38am

Hi All,

Please let me know the step by step process to set the e1000g0 interface speed to 1000mbps with full duplex from 100fdx and how to disable the auto negotiation with switch?.

Thanks and Regards,
Ganesh.

achenle · August 4, 2014, 10:11am

You fix the physical problem that's causing autonegotiation to fail.

Disabling autonegotiation on gigabit ethernet is a bad idea.

Blessay: Autonegotiation on Ethernet - it works, it should be mandatory! - EtherealMind

A major problem is that many people are also hard setting Gigabit Ethernet , and this is causing major problems. Gigabit Ethernet must have auto-negotation ENABLED to allow negotiation of master / slave PHY relationshitwhp for clocking at the physical layer. Without negotiation the line clock will not establish correctly and physical layers problems can result.

From Sun's Best Practices on Ethernet Auto-negotiation (2):

Disabling autonegotiation can result in physical links issues going undetected. The Fast Link Pule process does some testing for the physical link properties as well as negotiation on several Ethernet properties.

Unable to detect bad cables

Unable to detect link failures

Unable to check link partners capabilities

Unable to move systems from one port to another or to another switch or router

Unable to determine performance issues on higher layer applications

Unable to implement Pause Frames (Flow Control)(4)

From the IEEE standard:

All 1000BASE-T PHYs shall provide support for Auto-Negotiation
(Clause 28) and shall be capable of operating as MASTER or SLAVE.
Auto-Negotiation is performed as part of the initial set-up of the link, and
allows the PHYs at each end to advertise their capabilities (speed, PHY
type, half or full duplex) and to automatically select the operating mode
for communication on the link. Auto-negotiation signaling is used for the
following two primary purposes for 1000BASE-T:
a) To negotiate that the PHY is capable of supporting 1000BASE-T half
duplex or full duplex transmission.
b) To determine the MASTER-SLAVE relationship between the PHYs at
each end of the link. 1000BASE-T MASTER PHY is clocked from a local source.
The SLAVE PHY es loop timing where the clock is recovered from the received data streamus.

From Cisco:

Configuring and Troubleshooting Ethernet 10/100/1000Mb Half/Full Duplex Auto-Negotiation - Cisco

Also, running gigabit ethernet without autonegotiation is outside the ethernet specifications. Which means your gigabit hardware has never been certified nor tested under such conditions by any manufacturer or vendor. Manufacturers and vendors actually pay to get their hardware tested and certified to meet standards such as those that govern ethernet hardware. They do not pay to get tested outside of the specification requirements.

If you can find the old Sun Blueprints document regarding gigabit ethernet, it has some really good explanations also about why you do NOT disable autonegotiation for gigabit ethernet.

gsrungav · August 7, 2014, 6:31am

Thanks for the update achenle

Actually we have tried in that way also. I have disabled the auto negotiation and then tried to change the NIC card speed, but no luck.

server side e1000g0 and e1000g1 interfaces are up and running. here e1000g0 is running with 100fdx, where as e1000g1 is running with 1000fdx.My concern is about how can I change the e1000g0 interface speed to 1000fdx. As I mentioned earlier auto negotiation disable option is not working. Please suggest me if any any alternative ways are existed.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,
Ganesh.

---------- Post updated at 04:01 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:59 PM ----------

PFB the server dmadm show-dev command output

e1000g0         link: up        speed: 100   Mbps       duplex: full
e1000g1         link: up        speed: 1000  Mbps       duplex: full

Regards,
Ganesh.

jim_mcnamara · August 7, 2014, 8:27am

Please post the output of

fmadm faulty

Run as root.

junior-helper · August 7, 2014, 10:35am

Hello gsrungav,
this is my humble approach (assuming you are allowed to shortly interrupt the g1 link): why don't you systematically troubleshoot that issue?

I'd do/check the following:

Is auto-negotiation active on g1? If yes, turn it on on g0 too.
What happens if you switch the network cables (from g1 to g0 and from g0 to g1).
Does g0 become 1000 Mbps? Does g1 become 100 Mbps only?
If both assumptions are true, then plug both cables back as it was before.
Now you can exclude the problem on the server side!

Start troubleshooting on the switch side, e.g. compare the configuration of the switch ports, where the g0 and g1 network cables are plugged in. It's possible, that the switch port, where the cable from g0 is plugged in, is configured for 100 Mbps only.

Hope this helps.

achenle · August 7, 2014, 3:49pm

junior-helper:

Hello gsrungav,
this is my humble approach (assuming you are allowed to shortly interrupt the g1 link): why don't you systematically troubleshoot that issue?

I'd do/check the following:

Is auto-negotiation active on g1? If yes, turn it on on g0 too.

What happens if you switch the network cables (from g1 to g0 and from g0 to g1).
Does g0 become 1000 Mbps? Does g1 become 100 Mbps only?
If both assumptions are true, then plug both cables back as it was before.
Now you can exclude the problem on the server side!

Start troubleshooting on the switch side, e.g. compare the configuration of the switch ports, where the g0 and g1 network cables are plugged in. It's possible, that the switch port, where the cable from g0 is plugged in, is configured for 100 Mbps only.

Hope this helps.

Exactly. There's a physical problem with the link that won't autonegotiate. If you're lucky, there's a good chance someone disabled autonegotiation on the switch side and pinned that switch port to 100fdx.

Again: disabling autonegotiation is bad. If a link won't autonegotiate the highest speed it's supposed to, SOMETHING IS WRONG. If a car gets a flat tire and doesn't handle well, you don't ignore it and just force it to continue going 120 kph/90 mph. You fix the flat.

fpmurphy · August 8, 2014, 9:42am

Which version of Solaris are you on? I seem to recall that autonegotiation was a problem in Solaris 9.

gsrungav · August 11, 2014, 6:15am

bash-3.2# fmadm faulty
bash-3.2#

We are using Solaris 10 update 10

Regards,
Ganesh.

---------- Post updated at 03:45 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:44 PM ----------

bash-3.2# uname -a
SunOS sunlog 5.10 Generic_147440-25 sun4v sparc SUNW,Sun-Fire-T2000
 
bash-3.2# cat /etc/release
                       Solaris 10 5/08 s10s_u5wos_10 SPARC
           Copyright 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                             Assembled 24 March 2008

Regards,
Ganesh