Intermittent connectivity

[shaneh0]

I just installed a nortel baystack 310 switch. I have a problem with one work station, a brand new dell.

If i leave the default settings on the port (Spanning Tree Protocol turned on and autonegotiation) the client will be intermittently connected. You can sit there and watch for a few minutes and you'll keep seeing "Network cable unplugged." it connects for, at most, 5 minutes.

If I turn off autonegotiation and set it to full duplex, and disable stp, the conectivity problems cease but the connection is so slow that if you attempt to open a network drive with a lot of files it freezes the computer.

Any ideas?

 

[ZachBenj]

Did you force the DELL NIC to 100 Full? My suggestions are what I would try myself. If incorrect, I welcome corrections to my knowledge.
Scott
stomlin@baptistfirst.org

 

[Lequang]

Hi there,

autonegociate is negociation between the port of switch and the NIC. If negociation fail then you get trouble even if you force the NIC to 100Mb/Full duplex.
Try to set the NIC to autosense-half duplex.
If this work well, then you might have to upgrade firmare of NIC.

 

[shaneh0]

Just to provide an update:

I took Zach's suggestion -- and it solved about 75% of the problem. The client was, however, still getting kicked off about once an hour. This is especially not good in our environment because we run citrix.

Finally I disabled spanning tree protocol (which I re-enabled when I set the nic manually to full duplex since I never thought that STP was the culprit anyway) and it works fine. It hasn't dropped the connection once.

The Nic is a Broadcom. It's a brand new machine. I seached tek tips and usenet for any comments about dificulties w/ this nic and the nortel switch I'm using and couldn't find anything. I don't understand the problem but at least it's fixed.

Thanks for your help,

Shane