Broadcom NetXtreme (5702) & VLANs

[Stereodude]

Does anyone have any experience trying to do VLANs with a Broadcom NetExtreme 5702? Everything I've found says it supports them, but in the Broadcom Advanced Control Suite 2, the option to create a VLAN is greyed out. I've tried a few different driver revisions with no change.

 

[Stereodude]

While we're at it, it looks like nVidia's networking adapter doesn't properly support VLAN either. *sigh*

 

[Mercutio]

Maybe try a nice Intel or 3com?

 

[blakerwry]

For a PC, you'd typically use an access port... e.g, your switch has several VLANs defined and each port that has a PC is assigned to exactly 1 VLAN. Your trunk ports would carry traffic for several (or all) VLANs between switches.

You can trunk to a PC, but I've never tried it... takes the right NIC, drivers, and quite possibly OS.

I imagine your VLAN options are greyed out because you are currently connected to an access port and not a trunk port... Do you need more than 1 vlan to reach this PC (for instance, if it's acting as a router)?

 

[Stereodude]

Maybe try a nice Intel or 3com?

Yeah, that's the plan. I have more of the Intel Pro/1000 MT cards. I am planning to put one in each in my two non-cooperating machines. I have to find them first though.

 

[Stereodude]

For a PC, you'd typically use an access port... e.g, your switch has several VLANs defined and each port that has a PC is assigned to exactly 1 VLAN. Your trunk ports would carry traffic for several (or all) VLANs between switches.

You can trunk to a PC, but I've never tried it... takes the right NIC, drivers, and quite possibly OS.

I imagine your VLAN options are greyed out because you are currently connected to an access port and not a trunk port... Do you need more than 1 vlan to reach this PC (for instance, if it's acting as a router)?

I'm not trunking to a PC. I'm want my PC be members of multiple VLANs by using 802.1q. This means the PC has at least two virtual NICs in it. I just want to keep my gigabit traffic away from the 10 and 100Mbit traffic.

 

[Stereodude]

It looks like you can't control Jumbo Frames on a VLAN level, only on an physical adapter level.

 

[Stereodude]

Well, I got two of my PCs working correctly with the VLAN setup with mapped network drives via the exclusive gigabit VLAN using IPs instead of host names. I haven't tried to get the 3rd PC working yet. It looks like my plans for Jumbo Frames are dashed unless I use two physical adapters in each PC though.

 

[blakerwry]

I'm not trunking to a PC. I'm want my PC be members of multiple VLANs by using 802.1q. This means the PC has at least two virtual NICs in it. I just want to keep my gigabit traffic away from the 10 and 100Mbit traffic.

802.1q is synonymous with trunking. You may only be trunking 1 vlan or you may be trunking several. But the second you use 802.1q to tag frames, the link becomes a 'trunk'. 802.1q can be initiated or denied from either side of the link, so if your switch port is setup in access mode, 802.1q is not possible (the switch ignores tagged frames even if they are sent). Cisco switches are setup to autonegotiate trunk links if the other end supports them, other switches may have different defaults.

It looks like you can't control Jumbo Frames on a VLAN level, only on an physical adapter level.

This sounds like a driver/OS limitation... the switchport defines the maximum MTU allowed in (larger frames are discarded). You should be able to define the outgoing MTU per virtual NIC (this is easily done in Linux, I'd imagine this would be done in dev Mgr per virtual NIC in windows).

 

[Stereodude]

This sounds like a driver/OS limitation... the switch port defines the maximum MTU allowed in (larger frames are discarded). You should be able to define the outgoing MTU per virtual NIC (this is easily done in Linux, I'd imagine this would be done in dev Mgr per virtual NIC in windows).

It could be but the Intel drivers under XP don't let you set the jumbo frames on the virtual adapters, only the single physical adapter. I have no idea if other gigabit cards behave differently under XP.