On Sun, 12 Sep 2004, Chris Buechler wrote:

> I've seen it more times than I can count, but it's generally on older
> equipment (I've seen a ton of 10/100 hubs that are notorious for
> this), and ultra cheap switches.  I generally use Cisco switches, and
> have never seen them have a problem with it.  I let all my gear
> autonegotiate and it works fine.

Do 10/100 hubs even have autonegotiation?  Since the typical 10/100 hub
consists of an "overlay" of a 10Mb hub and a 100Mb hub with a single speed
converter between them, it seems like a "natural" for "parallel
detection".  Especially since deciding duplex mode is a non-issue with a
hub.

> I'll almost always force on a hub (on servers), because I've gone back
> to clients way too many times to force half duplex when the machine
> keeps setting itself to full, which significantly slows down network

Because it "successfully" autonegotiated full-duplex mode with a hub, or
because it has a screwed-up duplex default for the non-AN case?  There
have certainly been some cases where overriding AN was needed as a
workaround for a coding bug, but that's different from saying that it's a
necessary feature with properly working code.

In this day and age, who in their right mind would even bother with a hub
other than for packet capture? :-)

> unnecessary.  In the situations that I've done it, it couldn't be set
> on the switch or hub (unmanaged equipment) so changing the port the
> device is plugged into would have no effect.

But replacing the hub or switch might.  Or inserting a hub for capture
purposes.

					Fred Wright