1. Manuals
  2. Brands
  3. Phobos Manuals
  4. Network Card
  5. P430
  6. User manual

Phobos P430 User Manual

Pci quadport 10/100 base — t nic
Hide thumbs
Table of Contents

Advertisement

Quick Links

Download this manual

Advertisement

Table of Contents
loading

Summary of Contents for Phobos P430

  • Page 2 ® D A T A P R O P U L S I O N L A B S P 4 3 0 P C I Q P H O B O S U A D P O R T —...

  • Page 3: Table Of Contents

    Loading the P430 Software- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...
  • Page 4 Technical Support Through Phobos - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -...
  • Page 5 ™ the Phobos P430 PCI QuadPort 10/100BASE-T NIC, referred to as the "P430," and Phobos' PhobosLink Port Aggregation Software. H O W T O U S E T H I S G U I D E The following table shows where to find specific...

  • Page 6: Conventions

    C O N V E N T I O N S The following are text and icon conventions that are used throughout this guide: Text Conventions Items in bold should be typed in as they appear. • Items in ital ics are produced by the system. •...
  • Page 7 C H A P T E R The P430 is a 32-bit Network Interface Card (NIC) for use in workstations and servers with PCI 2.1 compliant expansion slots. The P430 places four Fast Ethernet Ports or Interfaces on a single PCI card. The P430 operates at both 10Mbps and 100Mbps as well as at both half and full duplex.
  • Page 8 N I C F E A T U R E S The P430 gives you the following capabilities: Four 10/00Base-T ports on a single PCI card. • PhobosLink Port Aggregation Software allowing one to four different • logical network segments from a single PCI card.
  • Page 9 C H A P T E R This chapter describes how to install the P430 in your computer and connect it to a network. P 4 3 0 I N S P E C T I N G T H E...
  • Page 10 C A U T I O N : The P430 is packed in an anti-static bag to protect it from static charges. Before removing the P430 NIC from the bag, touch the metal chassis of your computer. You can maintain grounding by wearing a wrist ground strap attached to the chassis.

  • Page 11: Connecting To The Network

    PCI slot. Secure the board firmly with the set screw that holds it to the bracket. Inspect the P430 to make sure that the board is completely inserted into the PCI slot. The set screw should easily secure the P430 in place.
  • Page 12 10Base-T when used with Category 5 UTP cable. The "straight-through" connection should be made from the P430 through the cable and the connectors to the hub. No crossover in the cable is required. 2. Plug your twisted-pair ethernet cable into the P430’ s RJ-45 connector. 2– 4...

  • Page 13: Loading The Software

    Windows NT should be up and running. Use the installation disk (CD-ROM) that came with your P430. If the P430 NIC is already installed in the computer and you reinstall Windows NT, the NIC will be recognized incorrectly during the installation process.

  • Page 14: Assigning Network Addresses

    The next step is to assign a network address to each of the four ports on the P430. If you have installed more than one card, remember that you need to assign addresses for each port, four ports on each card. If you don’t have the IP address information, see your system administrator.
  • Page 15 C O N F I G U R I N G T H E N I C S P E E D A N D D U P L E X M O D E The P430 can operate at either 10Mbps or 100 Mbps (Fast Ethernet) in half- or full-duplex mode.

  • Page 16: Loading The Software

    P430 ports for one interface and have the other two ports as regular 10/100Base-T connections, or you can configure a single logical interface using all 4 of the P430 ports as a single trunk, creating aggregate bandwidth of 400Mbps.
  • Page 17 5. Select the PhobosLink Connection Type. The connection types are: • Use this setting if the ports on the P430 are connected Y M M E T R I C to a switch that supports and is configured for trunking. For example,...
  • Page 18 • Use this setting if the ports on the P430 in the group SY M M E T R I C are connected to a switch (or switches) that do not support trunking. Under this setting, the P430 will balance the outgoing load across all the ports in the group, but incoming data will only be received on one port.
  • Page 19 T H E A D A P T E R S This chapter shows you how to install and configure the P430 software drivers for Novell Netware. There are generally three different ways to load a NetWare driver: using the INSTALL program, using the INETCFG program, and manually via the server console command line.
  • Page 20 This section describes how to install the ordinary P430 driver for NetWare. This driver does not include trunking or fail-over functionality; it merely treats each port on the P430 card as a completely separate network interface. This configuration is typically useful for setting up...
  • Page 21 11. A screen will appear containing three windows, labeled "Protocols", "Parameters", and "Board Actions". This screen will appear once for each P430 port available (i.e., four times if you have a single P430 board plugged into the machine), allowing you to configure each port independently.
  • Page 22 N O T E : If you increase this value for any of the P430 ports, or if you have more than one NIC in the system, then you may have to increase the systemwide "Minimum Packet Receive Buffers" and/or "Maximum Packet Receive Buffers"...
  • Page 23 AUTOEXEC.NCF startup file, following is a list of command-line options understood by the P430.LAN driver: I N D E X : The index number of the P430 port for the driver to attach to, starting at 1 for the first (topmost) port in the first P430 card in the system (typically the card in the lowest-numbered PCI slot).
  • Page 24 T X R I N G S I Z E : This option selects the number of transmit buffers for the driver to use. Finally, the P430 driver also supports the standard FRAME , NODE , and NAME command-line options.
  • Page 25 INSTALLING DRIVER SOFTWARE NetWare protocol stacks subsequently bound to the master port will then see all traffic entering and leaving all ports in the group; any protocol stacks bound to the other "slave" ports will not receive any traffic. N O T E : When using the NetWare INSTALL or INETCFG programs, you must still bind at least one protocol stack to each instance of the PhobosLink driver (i.e., to each slave port as well as to the master...
  • Page 26 11. A screen will appear containing three windows, labeled "Protocols", "Parameters", and "Board Actions". This screen will appear once for each P430 port available (i.e., four times if you have a single P430 board plugged into the machine), allowing you to configure each port independently.
  • Page 27 1 for the topmost port (the port closest to the mounting screw on the P430 board's backplane) on the first P430 board, 4 for the bottom most port on the first board, 5 for the first port on the second board, etc.
  • Page 28 N O T E : If you increase this value for any of the P430 ports, or if you have more than one NIC in the system, then you may have to increase the systemwide "Minimum Packet Receive Buffers" and/or "Maximum Packet Receive Buffers"...
  • Page 29 After you have finished setting the options for the P430 port, select "Save parameters and load driver" from the menu in the bottommost window.
  • Page 30 PHBSLINK.LAN driver: I N D E X : This is the index number of the P430 port for the driver to attach to, starting at 1 for the first (topmost) port in the first P430 card in the system (typically the card in the lowest-numbered PCI slot).
  • Page 31 T X R I N G S I Z E : This option selects the number of transmit buffers for the driver to use. Finally, the P430 driver also supports the FRAME, NODE, and NAME command-line options, whose meanings are standardized across all NetWare drivers;...
  • Page 32 4–14...
  • Page 33 HP-UX procedures; if you have any questions about installation, please refer to your HP-UX documentation. The P430 NIC should already be physically installed in your machine, and HP-UX should be up and running. Use the installation disk (CD-ROM) that came with your P430.
  • Page 34 su [ENTER] The system will then request the root password. Password: "root password" [ENTER] 2. Mounting the CD First place the CD in the CD-ROM drive. It is recommended that you use HP-UX's graphical system management interface, sam(1M), to mount the CD-ROM drive. To start sam(1M) type: # /usr/sbin/sam [ENTER] - Then select the icon then the icon...
  • Page 35 ANSI/IEEE standard 802.3u Draft 5. This means that the P430 will try and auto-negotiate with its link partner. If the link partner does not support auto-negotiation, the card will automatically auto-sense the link speed. The P430 can be set to a speed and duplex mode disabling auto-sensing completely.
  • Page 36 Phobos Corporation provides a simple utility for viewing and chang- ing the NIC settings. This utility is called and is "pqfe_control" installed in /usr/bin. It is also possible to use the standard HP-UX command to set the interface speed and duplex settings.
  • Page 37 To set the duplex mode of interface pqfe1 to full-duplex: # /usr/bin/pqfe_control -i pqfe1 -d full To see the current settings of all Phobos pqfe NICs: # /usr/bin/pqfe_control If you are unsure of your network link speed and duplex mode, use...

  • Page 38: Loading And Configuring Phoboslink

    4 of the P430 ports as a single trunk, creating aggregate bandwidth of up to 800Mbps in full duplex. The installation is similar to the P430 driver software. Refer to the first two sections of this chapter. HP-UX must be up and running. Use the installation disk (CDROM) that came with your P430.
  • Page 39 5. Select the PhobosLink Connection Type. The connection types are: • Use this setting if the ports on the P430 are connected Y M M E T R I C to a switch that supports and is configured for trunking. For example,...
  • Page 40 • Use this setting if the ports on the P430 in the group SY M M E T R I C are connected to a switch (or switches) that do not support trunking. Under this setting, the P430 will balance the outgoing load across all the ports in the group, but incoming data will only be received on one port.
  • Page 41 C H A P T E R This chapter shows you how to install and configure the P430 software drivers for Solaris. Installation follows standard Solaris procedures; if you have any questions about installation, please refer to your Solaris documentation.
  • Page 42 To start, type: # volcheck [ENTER] 3. Add the driver packages To install the Phobos’ drivers, add the Phobos packages by typing: # pkgadd -d /cdrom/solaris/pkg At this point, you will see the installation options: The following packages are available: 1.
  • Page 43 DRIVER SOFTWARE 4. Configure the Hosts File After installing the Phobos Quadport 10/100 driver software, you must create a hostname.pqfe<num> file for the adapter's Ethernet interfaces. You must also create both an IP address and a host name for its Ethernet interfaces in the /etc/hosts file.
  • Page 44 If the link partner does not support auto-negotiation, the card will automatically auto-sense the link speed. The P430 can be set to a speed and duplex mode disabling auto sensing completely. Phobos Corporation provides a simple utility for viewing and changing the NIC settings.
  • Page 45 INSTALLING DRIVER SOFTWARE The duplex mode is displayed along with the current operating speed. If the card is set for auto-negotiation, then will be “auto-negotiation” displayed when the auto-negotiation was successful or “auto-sense” will be displayed if auto-negotiation fails. If the card is not configured for auto-sensing you may set the speed on the card to 10Mbps or 100Mbps and it will stay at that speed setting and will not change modes.
  • Page 46 To set the duplex mode of interface pqfe1 to full-duplex: # /usr/bin/pqfe_control -i pqfe1 -d full To see the current settings of all Phobos pqfe NICs: # /usr/bin/pqfe_control If you are unsure of your network link speed and duplex mode, use the factory defaults of auto-speed sense and half-duplex.
  • Page 47 (CDROM) that came with your P430. The NIC should already be installed in your machine. 1. Install the P430 and PhobosLink drivers by following s t e p s 1-3 in the section “Load and Configuring the P430 Driver”, previously described in this Chapter.
  • Page 48 2. Now configure the PhobosLink interfaces by running the appli- cation plink_config. 3. Configure the Hosts File After installing the Phobos Quadport 10/100 driver software, you must create a hostname.plink<num> file for the adapter's Ethernet interfaces. You must also create both an IP address and a host name for its Ethernet interfaces in the /etc/hosts file.
  • Page 49 INSTALLING DRIVER SOFTWARE C O N F I G U R I N G H O B O S I N K 1. Launch the PhobosLink application by typing: # plink_config Once the software is loaded, the screen shown in figure 4-1 will appear: In this window, you create links by selecting interfaces from the “Available Interfaces”...
  • Page 50 Cisco’ s Fast EtherChannel or Sun Trunking. • Use this setting if the ports on the P430 in the group SY M M E T R I C are connected to a switch (or switches) that do not support trunking.
  • Page 51 N C R E A S I N G E R F O R M A N C E The TCP/IP performance of the Phobos Quadport 10/100 PCI adapter can be increased by changing the TCP high water mark to 64K.
  • Page 52 C H A P T E R This chapter shows you how to install and configure the P430 software drivers for Linux. Installation follows standard Linux procedures; if you have any questions about installation, please refer to your Linux documentation.
  • Page 53 # cd /mnt/cdrom/Linux [ENTER] # sh ./install_phoboslink.sh [ENTER] Run insmod to install the single port driver. # insmod phobos [ENTER] If you want trunking capabilities, you will need to run insmod again to install the PhobosLink software. # insmod plink [ENTER] At this point, you must setup PhobosLink as described on page 7-4 before continuing.
  • Page 54 INSTALLING DRIVER SOFTWARE C O N F I G U R I N G T H E I N T E R F A C E You can manually configure the interface or use ‘linuxconf’ to configure the interface. These instructions are for manually configuring the interface and must be executed for each card.
  • Page 55 (CDROM) that came with your P430. The NIC should already be installed in your machine. 1. Install the P430 and PhobosLink drivers by following s t e p s 1-3 in the section “Load and Configuring the P430 Driver”, previously described in this Chapter.
  • Page 56 Cisco’ s Fast EtherChannel or Sun Trunking. • Use this setting if the ports on the P430 in the group SY M M E T R I C are connected to a switch (or switches) that do not support trunking.
  • Page 57 See Chapter 7 for more detail on the PhobosLink features. 6. Repeat the steps above to create other groups or trunks. You can delete groups by highlighting the group and clicking on “Delete Group.” 7. Click “OK.” See figure 7-1 8.
  • Page 58 • Asymmetric Trunking - Should be used when the P430 ports in the group are connected to a legacy switch that does not support trunking. In this mode, packets will be transmitted on all the ports in the group, but only one of the ports will be used to receive incoming traffic.
  • Page 59 port if one of the ports goes down; the failover-only mode is provided only for situations in which utilizing multiple ports at once is undesirable. D V A N C E D E T T I N G S The advanced features of PhobosLink include the ability to choose the algorithm used for balancing the network traffic load across the different ports in a group or trunk.
  • Page 60 connection composed of multiple physical 100Mbs links. In this latter situation, the Adaptive and Fixed policies typically used by switches and other trunking drivers would not improve the per- formance of the dedicated connection beyond that of a single 100Mbps link, since only a single source/destination address pair is involved and therefore only a single link would ever be utilized.
  • Page 61 F I G U R E 7 - 1 From this window, priority settings are created, deleted, and modified. The order of the priorites can also be rearranged. To create a new priority, press on the “Add Priority” button and the following window will appear: 7 - 2 F I G U R E...
  • Page 62 At this point, the features are added to the trunking priority. Begin creating the priority by selecting between the protocols of IP, IPX, AppleTalk and ‘other’. The ‘other’ value allows the user to define the protocol value as defined in RFC 1700. If the IP protocol is selected, additional information can be added to the priority being created.
  • Page 63 After the criteria is selected, the last value inputted is the number of ports within the trunk that the network traffic described is limited to. This value can’t be larger than the number of ports in the entire group.
  • Page 64 1. Check LEDs Make sure the link light is active. The green link light on the back of the P430 should light when the twisted-pair cable is plugged in. If the link light is not active, check the light on the switch/hub on the other end of the cable.
  • Page 65 3. Make sure the card is seated correctly in the slot. Examine the PCI slot with the P430 to make sure the card is completely seated in the slot. 4. Make sure you can use ‘ ‘ to find a host on the same subnet.

  • Page 66: Basic Troubleshoot In G

    2. Make sure the interface is recognized. Use the network control panel to configure and display network interface information. Make sure the P430 or PhobosLink driver is displayed in the Bindings window. From a DOS Prompt, type ‘ipconfig’ to display the protocol infor- mation.
  • Page 67 NetWare 5 version of the P430/PhobosLink drivers, located in the "NetWare5" subdirectory on the driver disk. 2. The P430 or PhobosLink driver does not load, displaying a series of messages saying "Loader cannot find public symbol."...

  • Page 68: S P E C I F I C A T I O N S

    A P P E N D I X This appendix lists the specifications for the Phobos P430. It also contains pin assignments for the RJ-45 connector. P 4 3 0 C A R D S P E C I F I C A T I O N S...

  • Page 69: Connector Pin Assignments

    RD– (6) RD+ (3) TD– (2) TD+ (1 ) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 - 1 . - 4 5 F I G U R E A C O N N E C T O R P I N A S S I G N M E N T S N O T E : When Category 5 UTP cable is used, the pin assignments are identical for 10Base-T and 100Base-TX.
  • Page 70 C A B L I N G R E Q U I R E M E N T S When properly connected to a 100Base-TX network, the Phobos P430 NIC operates in 100Base-TX mode only and supports Category 5 cabling.
  • Page 71 STRAIGHT-THROUGH CROSSOVER TX– RX– TX– RX– RX– TX– RX– TX– F I G U R E A S T R A I G H T T H R O U G H A N D C R O S S O V E R P I N A S S I G N M E N T S A –...

  • Page 72: Appendix

    D R I V E R S U P P O R T O F F T H E N E T Phobos Corporation’s home web page is located at: : : / / / /...

  • Page 73: Technical Support Through Phobos

    T E C H N I C A L S U P P O R T T H R O U G H P H O B O S C O R P O R A T I O N Technical support can also be obtained by calling Phobos Corporation...
  • Page 74 The IEEE standard for a 10 megabit 10BASE-T per second baseband network on twisted-pair cable (the G100 adapter does not support 10Base-T). The IEEE standard for 100 megabit 100BASE-T per second CSMA/CD over two pairs of Category 5 UTP or STP wire. A trunking algorithm.
  • Page 75 A program, usually resident in server or workstation DRIVER memory, that controls network hardware (such as NICs or controllers) or implements the protocol stacks through which higher-level applications communicate with the network hardware. PhobosLink setting for a redundant connection. If FAILOVER a cable or port goes down, the network traffic will automatically switch to the other available ports.

  • Page 76: Glossary

    GLO S — S A RY PhobosLink mode for switches that support trunking. SYMMETRIC With this setting, PhobosLink can create a trunk of up to 4 ports, providing 400 Mbps bandwidth for trans- mitting and receiving packets from a single PCI NIC. A hardware device that links a node to a network TRANSCEIVER cable;...
  • Page 77 C-1 cabling length 9-1 requirements A-3 configuration P430 8-1 connecting to network 2-5 connector pin(s) A-2 conventions ii diagnostic tests 9-1 drivers installing 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, 6-1, 7-1 driver support B-1 environment A-1 failover C-2 Fast EtherChannel 8-2...
  • Page 78 ‘ipconfig’ 9-2 Linux 7-1 technical support B-2 troubleshooting 9-1–9-5 NetWare 4-1 UTP cabling 2-6 Windows NT 3-1 P430 (network interface card) 4-1 configuring 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, 6-1,7-1 connecting to network 2-5 features 1-2 inspecting 2-1 specifications A-1 speed 3-4 troubleshooting 9-1...
  • Page 79 C O M G I G A B I T E T H E R N E T If yours is an extremely fast network, the Phobos P1000 PCI 1000Base-SX Network Interface Card is a perfect solution to link file servers, server farms, and other applications.
  • Page 80 The Phobos E-100 Fast Ethernet network interface card provides 100Mbps connectivity to Silicon Graphics Indigo 2 workstations and Challenge M servers. The Phobos E100 NIC fits into the EISA slot and has driver options for IRIX 5.3, 6.2 or later.

Table of Contents