Issues with MII-TOOL

You might have come across the MII-TOOL. This tool reports and sets (for current boot time only) your link speed & duplex setting for the Service Console. BUT, did you know it’s not Gigabit aware?

Err, well neither did I!

Generally, we recommend hard-coding link speed/duplex in the modules.conf file. This helps eliminate remote console disconnects. BUT, did you know that a lot of Gigabit switches don’t support this and ACTUALLY prefer and work best with auto-negotiation.

Err, well neither did I!

If you not using gigbit on the Service Console NIC then normally recommendations apply – but it seems this is not to be the case with Gigabit connections.

I think we are going to see more traffic through the Service Console nic in future because of the number of Agents people wish to install to the Service Console – so gigbit is handy…

Strange, but apparently true!