server specs

[martint123]

Johnson42,
Never thought it may have been a bad cable. Never encountered that before. I will go ahead and replace all cables soon. I can assure you I do not ave any 10mb switches...
Thank you for your input.
Bruce

1 gig network uses all 8 wires in the cable, 100 meg and below uses only 4. So it only takes one ify wire to drop a link from 1 gig. (speaking from experience ;( )

[Bobins]

It's always good to set one end of your network to a fixed speed. Auto-speed negotiation, particularly with older network kit sometimes fails if both ends use auto. Personally I always set my nics to use the fastest speed supported.

[johnsonx42]

It's always good to set one end of your network to a fixed speed. Auto-speed negotiation, particularly with older network kit sometimes fails if both ends use auto. Personally I always set my nics to use the fastest speed supported.

This is not a good idea unless you know you need to do it for some reason. If auto fails to negotiate what you think it should, you probably have a cable problem... forcing it may make it appear to work right, that doesn't mean it is (for example, with pair 3 or 4 bad auto will negotiate a 100mb connection as it should; you can force a gigabit connection which may appear to work, but the connection will have poor performance). Only force it if you've truly ruled out all other possible problems.

[Bobins]

Johnsonx42
I totally agree that fixing the network speed on a nic could mask a potentially faulty cable and that cable defect possibility should be eliminated first. That said, over many years in IT I have seen many situations where auto-speed negotiation fails (usually with older network kit) and either you end up with the lowest possible default (10mb half duplex) or no network connection at all.

[Brucek2839]

Thank you to everyone who responded to my post. All great info to keep in mind. I found the problem. I had a bad switch.