[plug] OT: 10/100 hubs

[Nick Bannon]

On Wed, Apr 11, 2001 at 12:44:41PM +0000, Kevin Shackleton wrote:
[...]
> No-one during this discussion has said anything about full and
> half-duplex.  100Base-T can support full duplex so you get (potentially)
> 200 Mbps of data moving, with no collisions.  Of course in real life
[...]

10BaseT does as well - I think AUI does too. However, it only works
with a crossover cable (two machines back to back) or a switch. A
"normal" ethernet segment can only have one transmitter going at a
time, which every machine will see.

It can definitely help, in the simplest case if you have a machine
that's proxying traffic (not necessarily a web proxy, but anything
that's coming in and going straight back out again on the same
network).

> traffic is fairly one-directional.  But I wonder (without having a
> 10/100 card installed in my machine), if the average Linux punter knows
> how to select full duplex when talking to other full-duplex-capable
> hardware?

Well, it _should_ happen automagically most of the time. <grin>
Sometimes it doesn't and you have to force the media type of one or the
other end (or both) to stay still. Switches usually have a diagnostic
light to tell you if it worked.

Nick.

-- 
  Nick Bannon  | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick at it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal