On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 10:07:54AM -0800, Michael Graff wrote:
> If you get right down to it, so is copper.  There is a transmit pair
> and a receive pair.  It's the capabilities on each end that matter. 

I'm given to understand that this is not true for Gig-E on copper;
there's something smarter going on in the PHY's and they use all
wires for all signals.

> I
> just know that from my 10baseT and 100baseT experience it's best to
> hard-code both ends of permanent links, and if you hard-code one, you
> MUST hard code the other.
> 
> I don't know what the hell the designers of the autonegotiation
> protocol were on when they designed it...

Well, the point is that you either hard-wire, or you negotiate. If
you hardware, you disable negotiation, and therefore need to do it
on both ends.

--
Dan.