AD GPO problems and NIC/link/duplex settings 1

[elmurado]

Hi,
We have a W2003 AD domain with mix of HP workstations and servers with mix of Broadcom Gigabit and Fast ethernet cards. In between we have Catalyst 2900 XL switches.

I setup a software install GPO which worked fine on normal fast ethernet cards but on the Gigabit cards, there were problems(servers have gigabit cards.).
So I hard set both NIC on servers and NIC on workstations to 100/Full and the GPo worked fine.

However, then I had slow copy/transfer speeds for data across the link. Go back to Auto and the transfer is cool but the GPO for installs is not.

I'm guessing that i need to hard set the ports on the switches to 100 Full as well as all NICs-does that sound right?

 

[chieftan]

If you hard code 1 then make sure you hard code the other end of the link as well.

If you leave 1 as manually set 100 full and the other end as Auto, then you may run into difficulties as experienced.

 

[elmurado]

Thanks chieftan, that's what I had done and run into problems one way or another. It's setup like this

PC<---->Switch<--->Server

Now with both PC and server hard set the GPO works fine but file transfers are slow. With them both set to Auto, the transfers are fine but the GPO doesn't apply.

So I will hard set the switch port to 100Full and see what happens.

Is there a command to hard set all ports on a switch to 100Full at the same time?

Also, if I have a gigabit card in the server and one in the workstation, and wanted to have them both at 1000Full I guess I'd need to hard set the port to 1000Full as well-or does it auto neg this on a 2900?

 

[vipergg]

If you hardcode the servers and the switch is left at auto , the switch will default to 100/half because there is no autnegotiation from the server nic because it is hardcoded . By normal default the switch will go to 100/half and you then have a speed/duplex mismatch and all kinds of slow response because one side now has a collision domain . As you surmised you "must" hardcode both ends , server and switch or leave them both as auto.

 

[elmurado]

Thanks mate.

 

[chrisstyles]

Out of interest, what happens if you hardcode the switch and leavel the nic as a default auto negotiate? Does the same still apply. This is the normal setting on our network and we don't get many autonegotiation errors.

We use Mitel phones in the middle of the pc switch link and I don't know if they are already nailed up or auto negotiate.

Chris Styles

NT4/2000 MCSE

 

[elmurado]

I'll try that Chris. Thanks for the tip. It will be eaiser to do that and not cause any downtime for a few test machines rather than re setting the NIC's at either end.