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8437
February 2nd, 2004 12:00
dimension 8200 PXE boot, cisco switch problem
We have all dell computers here on campus and are havening a problem with booting of of the network. Recently we have had to enable port fast on the routers to prevent tree spanning over the network to prevent storms. what the problem we are haveing is, we can only get the dimensions to boot off the network for imaging using RIS at 10 mb/s. We need to be able to run them at 100. The reason for this is possibly every semester we have to re-image up to 550 machines in usually less then a weeks time. We need to be able to use the speed that the network was designed for. Before we enabled port fast on the cisco end of things we were able to boot off the network at 100 just fine on the newer dell machines, but there were many older 4100's with 3com cards that needed to be throttled down when port fast was disabled. Now we have to throttle down all of the computers. If there is a solution for this please let me know and thanks for your time.
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jwatt
4.4K Posts
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February 2nd, 2004 17:00
Hmmm...can the 8200's NIC be speed locked early enough so PXE works? I'm not sure!
Jim
sentinel-master
345 Posts
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February 3rd, 2004 07:00
Portfast is a feature on the Cisco multi-layer swicthes for allowing a "host port" to transition straight into forwarding state of spanning tree, and not wait the 30 -40 secs for listening, learning of 802.1d BPDUs and MAC addresses. One other effect it has though is to stop TCN (Topology Change Notifications) whenever a PC reboots - as NIC goes down/up................and in large network yu don't weant to lots of TCN's flying around
So "port fast" does not stop loops - and should only ever be used port PC, server connections - otherwise you could actully cause a storm for 30 secs - until the port sees a valid BPDU.
A useful command to use on the Cisco Catalyst family is "set port host x/y" which is actaully a macro command for eabling portfast, truning channelling off & disabling trunking on that port - all in one go. This is module dependent - but most Cisco ports have all these features available and defaut to enable initially.
If trunking & channelling capabilies are left enabled on the port - this could slow down or confuse the port negotiations.