0.91e auto-negotiation; asymmetric performance

[Jan Edler]

Hi, John.  I knew you were at Sarnoff, but I didn't know you
follow the tulip mailing list!  It's a small world, you know.

We have a bunch of SMC cards, both 9332DST and BDT variety,
and have been using them for years.

So far, I've used 91e with 1 DST card and 1 BDT card, with apparent success.
In these cases, they were connected to an old, non-Nway switch at 100BaseT.
In both cases, I loaded the tulip module with full_duplex=1.

I've also used 2 of the older cards (BDT) on a Nway-capable switch,
but I forced the switch to 100/full and used options=21.

I've never found things to work well when mixing Nway and non-Nway stuff.
Generally, the switches we have can be forced not to do Nway,
but some of the really cheap new ones (e.g., Linksys DSSX24)
work effectively only when connected to other Nway-capable equipment.

So, at least we know 91e can work with both flavor cards.
Over the next few days, I'm likely to try 91e on various other combinations
as well.  Eventually, I'll try an 9332DST with an Nway switch.

Jan Edler