The detailed operation of each physical port can be controlled by creating ethernet
top-level objects, one for each port
that you wish to define different behaviour for vs. default behaviour.
To create a new ethernet
object, or edit an existing object, select the Interface category from the top-level icons.
Under the section headed "Ethernet port settings", you will see the list of existing ethernet
objects (if any), and an "Add" link.
In a factory reset configuration, there are no ethernet
objects, and all ports assume the following defaults :-
When you first create an ethernet
object you will see that none of the attribute checkboxes are ticked, and the defaults
described above apply. Ensure that you set the port
attribute value correctly to modify the port you intended to.
If you are connecting a port to a link-partner that does not support auto-negotiation (or has it disabled), it is advisable to disable
auto-negotiation on the FB2900 port. To do this, tick the checkbox for the autoneg
attribute and select false
from the drop-down box.
You will then need to set port speed and duplex mode manually (see below) to match the link-partner settings.
If auto-negotiation is enabled, the FB2900 port will normally advertise that it is capable of link-speeds of 10Mb/s, 100Mb/s or 1Gb/s - if you have reason
to restrict the possible link-speed to one of these values you can set the speed
attribute to 10M, 100M or 1G. This
will cause the port to only advertise the specified speed - if the (auto-negotiate capable) link-partner does not support that speed, the link will fail to establish.
If auto-negotiation is disabled, the speed
attribute simply sets the port's speed.
If auto-negotiation is enabled, the FB2900 port will normally advertise that it is capable of either half- or full- duplex operation modes - if you have reason
to restrict the operation to either of these modes, you can set the duplex
attribute to either half
or full
. This
will cause the port to only advertise the specified mode - if the (auto-negotiate capable) link-partner does not support that mode, the link will fail to establish.
If auto-negotiation is disabled, the duplex
attribute simply sets the port's duplex mode.
autoneg
attribute (checkbox is unticked), and you set both port speed and duplex mode to values other than
auto
, auto-negotiation will be disabled ; this behaviour is to reduce the potential for duplex mis-match problems that can occur when
connecting the FB2900 to some vendors' (notably Cisco) equipment that has auto-negotation disabled by default.For each port (except the SFP slot), the orange, green and yellow port LED function can be set to one of the values shown in Table 6.1,
by setting the orange
, green
and/or yellow
attributes.
Table 6.1. Port LED functions
Value | Indication |
Link/Activity | Display link status/activity as described below (Default) |
Off | Permanently off |
On | Permanently on |
Flash | Flash on/off with cycle time approx 700ms |
When set to Link/Activity
the LED will display the port's current status according to conditions which can be set separately for each colour by creating link-activity
top-level objects, with attributes selected from Table 6.2. Unless otherwise indicated the attributes values are boolean so can be set to true
or false
.
Table 6.2. LED Link/Activity settings
Attribute | Effect |
colour | The LED colour controlled by this object (orange , green or yellow ) |
blink-rate | Slow = 2Hz, Medium = 4Hz, Fast = 8Hz, Linkspeed = 2Hz if 10M, 4Hz if 100M, 8Hz if 1G |
blink-speedmatch | Only blink if link speed matches an up-... attribute present in this object |
tx-activity | Blink when traffic is transmitted |
rx-activity | Blink when traffic is received |
collision | Blink if half duplex and collisions are detected |
up-10M | On when link up at 10Mbit/sec |
up-100M | On when link up at 100Mbit/sec |
up-1G | On when link up at 1G |
half-duplex | On when link up in full-duplex |
full-duplex | On when link up in half-duplex |
When no link-activity
object is defined for a particular colour, the following defaults are used:
<config ...> ... <link-activity colour="orange" /> <link-activity colour="green" blink-rate="Medium" up-10M="true" up-100M="true" up-1G="true" tx-activity="true" rx-activity="true" /> <link-activity colour="yellow" blink-rate="Medium" tx-activity="true" /> ... </config>
For example, to configure the port LEDs to show the port link speed via the pattern of the LEDs,
you could set link-activity
attributes as follows:
<config ...> ... <link-activity colour="orange" blink-rate="Medium" blink-speedmatch="true" up-10M="true" tx-activity="true" rx-activity="true" /> <link-activity colour="orange" blink-rate="Medium" blink-speedmatch="true" up-100M="true" tx-activity="true" rx-activity="true" /> <link-activity colour="orange" blink-rate="Medium" blink-speedmatch="true" up-1G="true" tx-activity="true" rx-activity="true" /> ... </config>
This would result in the following LED behaviour:
Table 6.3. Example modified Port LED functions
Orange | Green | Yellow | Indication |
Off | Off | Off | Link down |
On/Blinking | Off | Off | Link up at 10Mbit/s / Tx or Rx Activity |
Off | On/Blinking | Off | Link up at 100Mbit/s / Tx or Rx Activity |
Off | Off | On/Blinking | Link up at 1Gbit/s / Tx or Rx Activity |