dsmith@oregon.uoregon.edu (Dale Smith) (08/15/89)
I have been noticing high error rates (between .1 and 1.0 %) on one of
my ethernet segments. Packets being generated by my Proteon P4200
running V8.1 are the culprit. The packets give alignment errors and
carry the source and destination ethernet addresses of 020701000000 and
have packet type of Proteon (7030). I believe that these packets are
used by the p4200 for loopback tests on the Ethernet to see that the
interface is alive.
So, do you know why these packets give alignment errors? Know how to stop
it?
--
Dale Smith, Assistant Director of Network Services
University of Oregon Internet: dsmith@oregon.uoregon.edu
Computing Center BITNET: dsmith@oregon.bitnet
Eugene, OR 97403-1212 Voice: (503)686-4394tvm@proteon.com (Tom Miceli) (08/16/89)
Dale, The "errors" you have been seeing on the ethernet segment are generated by the interlan IL3010 board that is used in the Proteon P4200. This occurs every 4 seconds when the interface sends out maintenance packets. The details are as follows: "The IL3010 sends packets to itself, making use of the controller, the transceiver cable and connectors, the transceiver itself and the Ethernet coaxial cable. All the ethernet rules are observed including backoff on collision detect and aborting a transmission after 16 attempts. This maintenance sequence causes the IL3010 to transmit two minimum length ethernet packets with source and destination address of 2 7 1 0 0 0. The first of these is sent with an incorrect CRC byte appended, causing a CRC error at all receiving stations. The second packet is sent with valid CRC bytes appended." You have a few options to deal with this issue: 1) We can generate you a load that turns these maintenance packets off. The pitfall to this is that the interface will not know that it is down if something should happen to it. 2) You can replace the interlan interface board with a Proteon Ethernet interface card (P4215). 3) Ignore the "errors" that show up on the receiving stations. If you have any further questions let us know. Thanks, Tom Miceli