6.4. Physical port settings

6.4. Physical port settings
	Chapter 6. Interfaces and Subnets

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.

Note

Whether the settings can be applied to a given SFP port will depend on the capabilities of that SFP. Obviously crossover doesn't make sense for a fibre connection, and many copper SFPs don't support this either.

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 :-

Link auto-negotiation is enabled - both speed and duplex mode are determined via auto-negotiation, which should configure the link for highest performance possible for the given link-partner (which will need to be capable of, and participating in, auto-negotiation for this to happen)
Auto-crossover mode is enabled - the port will swap Receive and Transmit pairs if required to adapt to cable / link-partner configuration
The green port LED is configured to show combined Link Status and Activity indication - the LED will be off if no link is established with a link-partner. When a link is established (at any speed), the LED will be on steady when there is no activity, and will blink when there is activity.
The yellow port LED is configured to show Transmit activity.

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.

6.4.1. Disabling auto-negotiation

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.

6.4.2. Setting port speed

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.

6.4.3. Setting duplex mode

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.

Note

If you do not set the 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.

6.4.4. Defining port LED functions

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, `Normal` = 4Hz
`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


6.3. Defining an interface		Chapter 7. Session Handling