Autonegotiation problems with 3c59x 0.99L and 3c905C?

[Bill Owens]

This issue didn't seem to be in the archives, but please feel free to 
slap me with a copy of a previous discussion, if I missed it.

I have a Micron Millennia with a single 3C905C-TX-M card, running 
RedHat 6.1. For the last month I was using the 3c59x 0.99H driver 
that ships with the distribution, compiled as a module, but I noticed 
that it never seemed to auto-negotiate correctly. I'd previously 
forced the switch port to 100Mbps, because otherwise the card stayed 
at 10. I checked with vortex-diag, and it reported that 
autonegotiation was attempted but failed because the other side did 
not support it.

The other side is a 3Com 3300XM switch, which I have tried in 
multiple configurations: auto-config enabled and disabled, 
configuration forced to full and half-duplex, etc. I also upgraded 
the switch software to the current version (for other reasons). 
Nothing appeared to work; on top of that, the driver stayed in 
half-duplex, regardless of the setting of the options flag.

Today I started experimenting by trying the 3Com 1.0.0e driver, and 
it immediately auto-negotiated and set up the card at full 
capabilities (100Mbps FD FC). Performance was improved ;) I then 
tried the 3c59x 0.99L driver, by manual installation (down the 
interface, rmmod, insmod, up the interface), and vortex-diag once 
again reported that auto-negotiation worked. Performance was even 
better - nttcp hit 90+Mbps, iperf ran at almost 50Mbps.

However, after a cold boot, the 0.99L driver stopped negotiating, and 
appeared to put the interface into 10Mbps mode - the best throughput 
I could get was less than 8Mbps. On a hunch, I swapped in the 3x90x 
driver, which successfully negotiated, and then switched back to the 
0.99L driver; it then worked fine, and vortex-diag once again 
reported that auto-negotiation had succeeded.

I'm not a programmer, and I can't even guess where the problem might 
be. However, if there's some testing or debugging I can do, please 
let me know. . .

Thanks,
Bill.

-- 
Bill Owens
Advanced Network Technology Program Manager
NYSERNet
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