From: Douglas Smith 

We had this problem where the duplex/speed settings were messed up between
the layer 3 switch and the Novell server NICs (I have also seen this happen
with Windows 2000 servers also).  The chief symptom was that email would
take 45 minutes to open if the PC was on a different backbone than the
Novell server as was the case with most of our users including the
Executive Director and the Deputy Executive Director.

The solution is to open up Monitor on the Novell server under LAN/WAN
drivers and checking the line speed and duplexing (it varies between
different NIC drivers).  Then check the switch and see what it is set to. 
Short-term (unless you want to reboot the Novell server), change the
setting on the switch to match that of the server.  Long term (assuming you
have 100 meg switches), modify the Novell server to force 100 megabit full
duplex and set the switch to 100 megabit full duplex (do not use
auto-negotiate).  I do this with our Windows servers on the 100 megabit
backbone.  Also if you are using Broadcom cards on the server (Q57 or B57),
make sure that you use version 2.38 or later.

 - Doug.


In article , 72322.1016
{at}compuserve.com says...
> EEEEW!!!
>
> Are you saying that if it doesn't auto-negotiate properly, then after
> that it will get it right SOME, but not ALL of the time?!?!?
>
>
> On Mon, 31 May 2004 14:45:43 -0500, John Cuccia 
> wrote in message :
>
> >On Mon, 31 May 2004 12:30:58 -0700, Ellen K.
> > wrote:
> >
> >>Well, then that can't be the problem, because the server stays on.
> >
> >Yes it stays on, but if it doesn't auto-negotiate properly the only
> >time (as far as I know) it tries, then the intermittent problems you
> >describe can and do occur.
>
>

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