GarrettCom 6K8 User Manual

Magnum 6K8-Series Industrial Field Switch             Installation and User Guide   03/06) 

 

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depending on the capabilities of the remote device.  Standard commercially available 

Fast Ethernet media converters mostly do not support auto-negotiation properly, and 

require that the switched port to which they are connected be at 100Mb fixed speed.  

Attachment to 10/100 auto-negotiation ports typically will not work properly.  The 6K8-

Series Switch’s RJ-45 ports handle this situation by configuring the ports as per desire 

through MNS software port settings and can check the port status of each port after the 

change. 

When Magnum 6K8-Series RJ-45 copper ports are set for auto-negotiation and 

are connected to another auto-negotiating device, there are 4 different speed and F/H 
modes possible depending on what the other device supports.  These are: (1) 100Mb full-
duplex, (2) 100Mb half-duplex, (3) 10 Mb full-duplex and (4) 10 Mb half-duplex. 
The auto-negotiation logic will attempt to operate in descending order and will normally 
arrive at the highest order mode that both devices can support at that time. (Since auto-
negotiation is potentially an externally controlled process, the original “highest order 
mode” result can change at any time depending on network changes that may occur).  If 
the device at the other end is not an auto-negotiating device, the 6K8-Series’s RJ-45 
ports will try to detect its idle signal to determine 10 or 100 speed, and will default to 
half-duplex  at that speed per the IEEE standard. 

 

    General information - 

 -- the devices at both ends of the cable are capable of operation at either 10 

Mb or 100Mb speed and/or in full- or half-duplex mode, and can 

send/receive auto-negotiation pulses, and . . .  

 --  the second of the two connected devices is powered up*, i.e., when 

LINK is established for a port, or 

--   the LINK is re-established on a port after being lost temporarily. 

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NOTE  –  Some NIC cards only auto-negotiate when the computer system 

LINK – enabled” rule above, but may be occasionally encountered. 

When operating in 100Mb half-duplex mode, cable distances and hop-counts 

may be limited within that collision domain. The Path Delay Value (PDV) bit-times must 

account for all devices and cable lengths within that domain. For Magnum 6K8-Series 

Fast Ethernet switched ports operating at 100Mb half-duplex, the bit time delay is 50BT.