Questions on Hubs/switches?

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What hubs/switches have you used or are used at your work place and do you program the ports yourself or use a particular type of software?

At the place where I work they used to use cisco switches and now have moved over to extreme switches. In case some of you don't know what extreme is (beside a pain in the backside sometimes) they call them intelligent switches

designed to run two different ip address such as a 10 and 128 address through the same switch. However what do you do when a PC is producing two MAC address and the extreme switch blocks it and shuts down that port switch??

 

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I don't know these switches, but I'd wonder about any port security settings. After all, it isn't unusual for a hub to be connected to a port switch, and there would be +1 MAC addresses on that port. There may be a security setting that sets the maximum number of addresses, which is user configurable? That's how it would be for a cisco switch anyway.

 

It only seems to effect computers with an Intel 915GAG Marvel onboard NIC.

Here's the link to intel to see the spec of the motherboard from intel

As you can see from the specs the board comes with 2 choices of onboard NIC. The intel Pro VE NICS work fine but it's the marvel ones that are sending duplicate mac address. But it's intermitent sometimes the correct mac address is used the later on in the day the 2nd one appears. The switch monitors the switch and sends an email indicating which switch the event took place. I know there are over 20 users out there with the same spec motherboard it's only a matter of time before they all go down. 4 have already gone in the space of a week

 

We have extreme switches at work. One the main problems is that their auto-negociation is 'poor'. We are constantly having to set things like full-duplex and speed.

Harry.

 

Whereas the Extreme switches where I work are great - and I've never had a problem with autonegotiation on them.

They're pretty similar to Cisco - offer everything a Cisco switch does and EpiCenter (the management platform) is really cool. I've also found them to be more reliable than Cisco - though tbh I haven't done too much with them in the way of funky VLANs & trunking. For our purposes, they do just fine.

To be honest, I think Extreme and Cisco are pretty close to each other - its just Cisco's dominance in the market that keeps Extreme from being well-known. They don't help themselves sometimes - their promotions department is dreadful! I think they took a look at what happened to Bay Networks when they were bought out by Nortel a few years back and have decided to stay under Cisco's radar and not piss them off!

 

UCHEEKYMONKEY,

Which operating system is installed on the PC with the "Intel(r) Desktop Board D915GAG?"

 

Windows XP I believe it's the SP2 pack on there because these PC's were built almost 9 months ago and unless the user has admin rights they haven't been updated.

 

Zeb - when you configure the extreme switch what software do you use to change ip address or mac on that switch?

I am trying to get hold of Betablox but i can't find it on google? Any ideas?

 

UCHEEKYMONKEY,

Which LAN port on the Intel(r) Desktop Board D915GAG is connected to the switch, the Intel or Marvell?

 

Marvell

I guess i could get around the problem by putting in a Realtrek PCI LAN card. But it sems such a waste of hardware. It's odd though those PC's with the marvell lan card work OK on the CISCO switches but not the extreme ones.

 

UCHEEKYMONKEY,

For the Windows XP computer, for the Marvell interface, what is the Ethernet settings for: 1) Speed and 2) Duplex?

 

Ummm...

Telnet or SSH fella!

Using a GUI for initial configuration of network devices is something I've never been a fan of. The CLI is the way to go. It's faster, cleaner and, once you know the syntax, easier. Now, once the switches you manage are all up and running (I've got about twenty at our main site to look after) the GUI-based management tool (EpiCenter) is excellent - but when you stick them in with a basic config, I'd always just use the command line

 

It's set at full duplex..... I thought half duplex only works for printers that use a jet direct box or have a onboard network card?

 

UCHEEKYMONKEY,

Half Duplex means one side transmits and the other side remains silent. Then the other side transmits and the first side remains silent.

Full Duplex means both sides can transmit without remaining silent.

Ok, now that we know it's set to full duplex, what speed is the NIC running at?

 

I went to the website but there doesn't seem to be an upgrade for that type of NIC. There's a Bios update which was used to enable PXE booting when doing a RIS.

Yep everything is 100Mbps cat5e cables except for areas whicch run on a mini hub that uses 10Mbps.

Sparky - What type of hubs/equipment do they use where you work??

 

Thanks Zeb