This section describes the twisted pair ports on the switches.
The ports are 8-pin RJ-45 connectors that use four pins at 10 or 100 Mbps and all eight pins at 1000 Mbps. For the pin assignments, refer to “RJ-45 Twisted Pair Port Pinouts” on page 65.
A port’s speed can be 10, 100, or 1000 Mbps. The speed can be set automatically through Auto-Negotiation, the default setting, or manually with the system software.
Note
To operate at 1000 Mbps, a twisted pair port must be set to Auto - Negotiation. The speed of a twisted pair port cannot be set manually to 1000 Mbps.
Atwisted pair port can operate in either half- or full-duplex mode. (Full- duplex mode is the only mode available when a port is operating at 1000 Mbps.) The twisted pair ports are IEEE 802.3u-compliant and Auto- Negotiate the duplex mode setting.
You can disable Auto-Negotiation on one or all of the switch ports so that you can set the duplex mode manually through the system software.
Note
For a port to successfully Auto-Negotiate its duplex mode with a 10 or 100 Mbps end node, the end node must be configured for Auto- Negotiation. Otherwise, a duplex mode mismatch can occur. A port using Auto-Negotiation defaults to half-duplex if it detects that the end node is not using Auto-Negotiation. This results in a mismatch if the end node is operating at a fixed duplex mode of full-duplex.
To avoid this problem when connecting an end node with a fixed duplex mode of full-duplex to a port, use the system software to disable Auto-Negotiation on the port and set the port speed and duplex mode manually.
The ports have a maximum operating distance of 100 meters (328 feet).
