Network card Auto Negotiate

[Gerald Combs]

In a better world ifconfig, netstat, or some entry under /proc would give
you this information.  Even logging autonegotiation state change
information through the kernel like Solaris does would be helpful.  Linux
_almost_ does this - dmesg reports the following for the NIC in my
machine here at work:

eth0: 3Com 3c905 Boomerang 100baseTx at 0xfc40,  00:60:08:95:8c:e3, IRQ 5
  8K word-wide RAM 3:5 Rx:Tx split, autoselect/MII interface.
  MII transceiver found at address 24, status 786f.
  Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.

According to http://www.scyld.com/diag/mii-status.html, the "status 786f"
bit indicates that my card is capable of autonegotiation and that it's
finished negotiating.  However it doesn't tell me what the results of the
negotiation were.  According to the Scyld page you need a utility called
"mii-diag" to tell you that.

Mii-diag compiled without complaint on my system and gives me the current
autonegotiation status.  YMMV.

On Fri, 26 Oct 2001, Michael Goins wrote:

> Hey folks,
> 
> How can I find out what my network card auto negotiated to?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Michael Goins
> Unix Administrator
> Waddell & Reed
> 6300 Lamar Ave.
> Shawnee Mission, KS 66201
> 913.236.1615
> 
> 
> 
>