mii-tool and dsl?

[Eric Diamond]

Monday, April 19, 2004 9:07 PM Jay Daniels asked:
> I have dual builtin Intel Corp. 82540EM Gigait Ethernet 
> Controller. My hub is 10 Mbit, but both the DSL eth0 and the 
> hub eth1 show 10 Mbit.  It seems I remember the DSL link eth0 
> showing as 100 Mbit with RH 9.

It may have, but I doubt it. Most DSL routers/modems have 10Mb
interfaces. It doesn't make sense for them to be built anyother way. The
newer chipsets are more expensive and would add to the cirduit board
real estate.

> What should the DSL side be set to?  I assume 10 Mbit would 
> cover my slow DSL connection.

Yup. You're probably well under 1 Mb/s. Even if you were next door to
the CO, and had a friend inside who was willing to set your DSLAM
parameters to wide open, you wouldn't see much more than 7.5 Mb/s
anyway.

> After running the mii-tool -v -F 100baseT-HD eth0 the link died.

Yes, see below...

> Before running mii-tool I got:
> eth0: no autonegotiation, 10baseT-HD, link ok
> eth1: no autonegotiation, 10baseT-HD, link ok

This says that neither the DSL router nor the hub support
auto-negotiation. You won't get your PCs interfaces to do any better
without replacing the equipment it's connected to. And as I stated
above, replacing the DSL router won't do you any good in that regard
anyway.

Eric Diamond
eDiamond Networking & Security
303-246-9555
eric at ediamond.net