Re: [LUG] NIC - full or half duplex?

[Jon Still <jon@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 7 Sep 2001, John Horne wrote:

> Quick question, does anyone know how I can tell if the network card in my PC
> is running at full or half duplex? The card is an old 3c509 running at

I'd imagine that this kind of thing is set with the driver options in
/etc/conf.modules or modules.conf.  ifconfig certainly won't tell you -
try looking through your dmesg output.

However, I seem to remember that full duplex only works in a switched
environment.  I believe the reason for this is that with a shared medium,
you need to listen to the wire while you transmit in order to detect
collisions - and I *think* this collision detection precludes the use of
full duplex for actual data transmission.

On the other hand in a switched environment there can be no collisions, so
you can send and receive data willy-nilly.

On the other hand I may be talking out of my behind, but what I said makes
some kind of sense to me at least :)

J.

-- 
Jon Still                               E-mail: jon@xxxxxxxxxxx
System Administrator                    Web:    http://www.tertial.org/
tertial.org                             Tel:    +44 (0)7977 066087

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