Manual Speed and Duplex Mode Configuration

HP PCI-X Ethernet cards support both half- and full-duplex operation. Full-duplex mode is most commonly found in 10 Mbit/s, 100 Mbit/s, or 1000 Mbit/s switches. Full-duplex mode may provide a throughput advantage under some circumstances, but the degree of the advantage is application-dependent.

The Gigabit Ethernet cards also support autonegotiation; so you should not normally need to manually set the duplex mode. If a card is connected to a device, such as a switch, that is autonegotiating, the card will autonegotiate with the device to mutually determine the highest possible speed and duplex settings between them.

If a switch operating at full-duplex mode does not autonegotiate, the card defaults to half-duplex when autonegotiation is turned off -- this could cause a mismatch between the card and switch (at either 10, 100 or 1000 Mbit/s). To fix this, use the system admin manager (SAM) or edit the configuration files to permanently save your settings. You can use the lanadmin -X command as described later in this section though your changes would not be saved across reboots.

Ensure that the speed, duplex mode, and autonegotiation of the associated switch are configured according to the table of Supported Configurations in chapter 1. If the switch supports autonegotiation on the ports connected to the cards, this should be enabled as explained in the “Autonegotiation and Autosensing” section.

To determine the speed and duplex mode of your card before performing manual configuration, enter:

$ lanadmin -x ppa

The ppa is the physical point of attachment. You can get the ppa from the output of the lanscan command.

To manually set the duplex mode of the interface, use the -X option (NOTE the uppercase X) of lanadmin as follows:

$ lanadmin -X mode ppa

In these commands, mode can be any one of the following strings (and the fd or hd are case-insensitive):

10fd =10 full-duplex

10hd =10 half-duplex

100fd =100 full-duplex

100hd =100 half-duplex

To turn autonegotiation on, enter:

$ lanadmin -X auto_on ppa

For example, if the ppa of the 100Base-TX interface is 5, the command to set the card to 10 Mbit/s and full-duplex mode would be:

$ lanadmin -X 10fd 5

After entering the lanadmin -X command, you must wait at least 11 seconds before attempting to use the specified network interface.

If you want the Duplex Mode setting to be effective in all subsequent reboots, you must enter the information in the following file:

/etc/rc.config.d/hpbtlanconf

Manually configuring the speed or duplex setting of a switch port on some switches may disable that switch port from doing autonegotiation. Verify that both the card and the switch port are operating according to the Supported Configurations shown in chapter 1.

If you use manual configuration to change the card to a different speed and duplex mode, you may need to turn autonegotiation on before the manual setting takes place.

	NOTE: Mismatches between the speed, autonegotiation, or duplex mode of the card and switch will cause incorrect operation.