Down Poll Rate and duplex mode questions?

[UserAA]

What's the Down Poll Rate setting for 3com's NIC (3C905B-TX). It's set to 8 by default. The other setting is 64. Would 64 give me better throughput? My other question is duplex operation. I have a small network consisting of 2 PCs with these 3com nics connected to the Netgear 314 router. When playing back videos, it's choppy at anything above 10Mb/half duplex, especially at 100Mb/full duplex. I'm using 100Mb CAT5 cable.

 

[LordOfAll]

What's the transmit threshold set to? Sounds like you may be creating runts. Try setting it to the largest value and work down from there. You can also try store and forward. The 314 has a built in switch, right? So full duplex should not be a problem. I have no clue what down poll is.

 

[Mr-Mahem]

If the 314 is a switch as LordOfAll believes then can you force the duplex - or is it auto negotiate only?
If it's auto negotiate then only set the NICs to auto negotiate or half duplex. If you set the NICs to full duplex then the switch will not receive any negotiation commands and will assume half duplex. You then get half duplex talking to full duplex - and then you get throughput issues.
If the 314 is a hub then this can never do full duplex.

Mr-Mayhem

 

[spidey07]

The 314 is a switch. I've never had to touch any driver settings other than speed and duplex. Leave these to auto and see what they negotiate to. Other than that I don't know how to set speed/duplex on this switch, but it should default to auto.

spidey