LAN Network Cable Unplugged

Dakhor · Jan 3, 2006, 12:25 AM

Ok so Im a noob at this - heh anyway.

Installed everything just fine on a 266Mhz 190Mb RAM… One realtek NIC and one 3Com

Now i cant seem to get the LAN side working. In the text menu I hit 2 and setup the ip and enabled DHCP ( prob its on by default but did it anyway ). There is no connection on the LAN side - cant ping - Windows XP sais network cable is disconnected. Cant release renew ip etc. Both NIC:s work as WAN though ie they both get a ip from WAN DHCP - ( its 100Mbit broadband connection - no dialup ) Uninstalled everything i could think of on my WinXP mashine - firewall - hamachi etc even though i am pretty sure it has nothing to do with those things... But with windows u never know hehe.

To clarify - the WAN NIC its lights glows when the network cable is plugged in - The LAN one does not. Switching them does not help in any way ( ie doing it in pfsense or the PCI slot or both )

This is the first time I mess with BSD or any of this kind. But it seems to me that one NIC - the LAN one isnt powering up somehow.

Any tips on what I can try to check out?

/DaK/

hoba · Jan 3, 2006, 12:28 AM

Is your client connected directly to the pfSense without a switch in between? Then you need a crossovercable to cross over send and receive. Other option is to put a switch in between. If the light on the nic doesn't turn on it only can be a wiring issue.

Dakhor · Jan 3, 2006, 12:43 AM

Thanx – i almost tested to put my router inbetween to try it that way ( ie use the LAN ports of it as a switch ) - only reason why I didnt is that I didnt wanna drag my last cable through the wall from my other room...

Ill do that now as I dont have a crossed over cable - im sure thats what was the trouble... Like I said im new to this hehe THANX!!!

Oh and sorry I should have posted this in the hardware forum ...

/DaK/

hoba · Jan 3, 2006, 12:51 AM

Nah, it's fine here as it is some kind of "installation" thing and someone else might run across this as well ;)

Dakhor · Jan 3, 2006, 1:32 AM

So I assume any NIC to NIC cable must be a crossed over one? - Kind of like a old serial cable…

/DaK/

hoba · Jan 3, 2006, 1:58 AM

Yes, always if same kind of ports talk to each other like switch to switch (if no uplink port is used and the switch doesn't have auto mdi-x) or nic to nic (even those can have auto mdix nowadays, my notebook has and this is a nice feature). Otherweise it's like mouth on mouth and ear on ear and it has to be mouth on ear and ear on mouth. makes sense?

Dakhor · Jan 3, 2006, 2:08 AM

Yeah I got ya… Never really had a need to know that info - im not really that interested in cables hehe... I knew there were different kinds of cables but didnt bother to find out why, or rather i didnt memorize when i read about it.

Anyway learning things by trial and error is far surperior then just following some kind of guide.

Just felt I was at a loss here heh. I prob would have figured it out but needed one more cable and thats was a bitch to get where it is now, ill buy a new one instead tomorrow.

thanx for the help.

/DaK/

Inca · Jan 4, 2006, 7:30 AM

A few weeks ago it took me at least 45 minutes to realize that my laptop has a 100 mbit nic, and the firewall a 10 mbit one :o

I wonder why that didn't work ;D

hoba · Jan 4, 2006, 7:33 AM

Either your Switch/Hub or your Networkcards must do something wrong or are missconfigured. A 100mbit NIC should fall back to 10 mbit by doing autonegotiation (unless this setting was set not to autonegotiate). However, some older cheap switches/hubs don't support 10 mbit and are 100 mbit only.

Leoandru · Jan 4, 2006, 1:23 PM

I think this would be a good time to post my question since we talking about switchs and wiring.

I'm doing a bit of an upgrade, I'm buying a new computer with a gigabit lan card. Also i'll purchase a gigabit card for my pfSense bsdbox to use as the lan interface and finally I should get a gigabit switch. What I want to know is this the other computers on the network are still using 100 Mb cards, how would the switch operate with this? will it switch at 100 to everyone or 1000 to me and 100 to everyone else?

sullrich · Jan 4, 2006, 5:28 PM

See http://faq.pfsense.com/index.php?sid=18033&lang=en&action=artikel&cat=10&id=38&artlang=en&highlight=hidden where you can override your speed/duplex.

Be VERY CAREFUL when doing this, we don't include these options for a reason.

hoba · Jan 4, 2006, 9:05 PM

@Leoandru:

I think this would be a good time to post my question since we talking about switchs and wiring.

I'm doing a bit of an upgrade, I'm buying a new computer with a gigabit lan card. Also i'll purchase a gigabit card for my pfSense bsdbox to use as the lan interface and finally I should get a gigabit switch. What I want to know is this the other computers on the network are still using 100 Mb cards, how would the switch operate with this? will it switch at 100 to everyone or 1000 to me and 100 to everyone else?

All Gigabitswitches I know of can do 10/100/1000 autonegotiation, so the answer is yes, a 10 mbit client runs at 10 mbit, 100 at 100 and 1000 at 1000. The switch takes care of "translating" to different speeds.

thinair · Jan 5, 2006, 1:20 PM

@Leoandru:

I think this would be a good time to post my question since we talking about switchs and wiring.

I'm doing a bit of an upgrade, I'm buying a new computer with a gigabit lan card. Also i'll purchase a gigabit card for my pfSense bsdbox to use as the lan interface and finally I should get a gigabit switch. What I want to know is this the other computers on the network are still using 100 Mb cards, how would the switch operate with this? will it switch at 100 to everyone or 1000 to me and 100 to everyone else?

While that will work, why a gig link to the pfsense box? Unless you have more then one gig interface (physical or virtual) on the firewall it seems kind of useless, or unless you have two or more 100Mb interfaces that you're routing to from the gig interface at their capacity.

hoba · Jan 5, 2006, 1:24 PM

Maybe he wants a faster WebGui ;D

Leoandru · Jan 6, 2006, 8:21 PM

nah not really.. Manily for bandwidth management + squid.

squid cache hits on the pfSense box are shaped (if enabled). I figured if I use HFSC to guarantee full bandwidth (link speed) for 300ms to http traffic, then I may be able to get away from the limitations of the shaping for a short period of time. with the 1000 M interface the pfSense box should be able to push out more data within that period of time and probably do so very efficiently to several 100 M interfaces. If its a cache miss then I think all requesting interfaces have to compete for the real isp supplied bandwith (I suppose).
After that curcial 300 ms window the realtime kicks in to throttle the traffic. Its all theoretical i'm not sure if this will work.

cmb · Jan 7, 2006, 7:32 PM

@Leoandru:

nah not really.. Manily for bandwidth management + squid.

squid cache hits on the pfSense box are shaped (if enabled). I figured if I use HFSC to guarantee full bandwidth (link speed) for 300ms to http traffic, then I may be able to get away from the limitations of the shaping for a short period of time. with the 1000 M interface the pfSense box should be able to push out more data within that period of time and probably do so very efficiently to several 100 M interfaces. If its a cache miss then I think all requesting interfaces have to compete for the real isp supplied bandwith (I suppose).

Yeah but unless you have a few thousand machines, there's no way you'll ever exceed 100 Mb in that scenario.

Leoandru · Jan 7, 2006, 8:59 PM

@cmb:

Yeah but unless you have a few thousand machines, there's no way you'll ever exceed 100 Mb in that scenario.

or a few large cache files. ;)