Equipment Support > Hardware By Brand > Cisco > [HELP] Cisco Switches shows cable not connected

[HELP] Cisco Switches shows cable not connected

Did you configure the speed/duplex on the PC side of things or on the switch? I would try hard coding the speed/duplex to 100/full on the switch and see if it makes any difference. Be sure to try it with the PC hard coded to 100/full as well. Do you see any messages appear on the switch when you're connecting/disconnecting the cables? Are you using straight-through or crossover cables? Can you post the configuration from the switch? What does the output of "show interface gigabit 0/x" look like (where x is the number of the port the PC is connected to)?

I would also recommend testing this with a CAT6 cable as strange as that sounds...

reply to Chuck_Rogers
You need to make sure that the ports are not shutdown. Post a "show run" of the switch config so we can take a look and see exactly what's wrong. Also make sure that you are not using a crossover cable by accident.

reply to Chuck_Rogers
You're trying to connect a gigabit NIC to a fast ether port. If you check I'll bet you see the client is reporting a half duplex connection, which is what happens when a mismatch can't sync.

What you will likely have to do is set the client NICs to operate at 100/full.

Dont forget to configure spanning-tree portfast as well. Does the switch spit out any log messages in show log?

reply to Chuck_Rogers
just out of curiosity, why are you forcing speed and duplex? The general rule of thumb is cisco-2-cisco: hard set cisco-2-anything else: auto/auto.

Also, the 3550T does not do MDI-X.

Ryan
--
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. -Douglas Adams

The rule of thumb in 2012 is autonegotiate everything everywhere. Hard setting is only required with ancient hardware or broken protocol implementations.

If you slap a tap on the wire of a connection between two copper gigE-attached devices, and hard set the speed and duplex to gig, tell me that you dont see it still autonegotiate. Its more than a best practice, its the law. =P

reply to Chuck_Rogers
*shrug*

We hardset everything cisco-2-cisco in our data centers and auto anything customer facign.

reply to Chuck_Rogers
I used to hard code everything, but then I started leaving everything as auto after I found that 99.99999% of the time things would autoneg properly, and only hard code where autoneg failed to setup to the desired speed/duplex settings.

In this day and age, and particularly with new kit, hard coding should not be necessary. But sometimes its hard to un-teach an old dog old tricks.

Going back on-topic: OP, have you checked the specs of the NIC to make sure it will do 100mbit? I dont know how many NICs out there are 1000 only, but I do believe there are some. And yes, make sure you're using a straight cable, not cross over. A lot of older Cisco switches do NOT auto detect straight/xover. And finally, do the two NICs link properly if you hook them up back to back? For that you will probably need an xover cable to test.

reply to Chuck_Rogers
Thanks for all those that replied... This site went down and took me awhile to get back on here and respond. It was a driver issue.. reloaded lastest drivers on Nic card and it worked... I would have never believed Realtek would have released drivers that wouldnt work with cisco but they did....

Thanks everyone...

reply to Chuck_Rogers
If you want a decent card, buy Intel PRO cards.

Everything else is cheap and/or nasty.

reply to nosx
You must not work with a lot of Cisco gear. Cisco's use of Auto Negotiate between a lot of other Cisco gear plain out sucks. Cisco to other devices seems to work flawlessly.
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I do not, have not, and will not work for AT&T/Comcast/Verizon/Charter or similar sized company.

reply to nosx