6.3. Physical port settings

6.3. 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.

The FB6000 configuration contains a number of port settings which are not possible and will not save, e.g. 10M and 100M modes. These are included for compatibility with FB2500 and FB2700 products. The FB6000 only operates at gigabit port speeds.

6.3.1. Setting duplex mode

If auto-negotiation is enabled, the FB6000 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 FB6000 to some vendors' (notably Cisco) equipment that has auto-negotation disabled by default.

6.3.2. Defining port LED functions

Each port has options to control the way the yellow and green LEDs are displayed based on the state of the port. The default is yellow for Tx and green for link/activity.


6.2. Defining an interface		Chapter 7. Routing