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Changing Speed, Duplex or MTU of Exinda NIC via CLI

Author: Luis Fernandes Updated

Overview

This article provides information that relates to the changes of speed, duplex, or MTU of an Exinda device via CLI (command-line interface). 

 

Information

Speed, duplex, or MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) size on the Exinda NICs (Network Interface Cards) can be manually configured. This is good for troubleshooting purposes, or if the switch port or router port has a mismatched speed setting. Changing this to match the manual setting could resolve connection issues. Furthermore, this can assure that if a future problem might happen with a new device on the network, the hardcoded parameters will still be on the Exinda side.

Set the speed/duplex to be the same as the device the Exinda is connected to. Running auto on both ends is most desirable, however. Note that if the speed is changed to 1000Mbps (1Gbps), even though it is 'hardcoded,' due to the technical specifications of Gigabit speeds, it is still technically auto-negotiating, but the Exinda is only advertising that it can do Gigabit speed (not 100Mbps or anything lower). This is because Gigabit speeds have a complexity that requires exact auto-negotiation between the two sides (more than just the speed and duplex settings), so there is no possible 'hardcoding' on any device for Gigabit speed.

To change these settings on the Exinda device, navigate to Configuration > System > Network, under the NICs tab. Under the interface menu, it will show you all the Exinda NICs in the device. You can change the speed, duplex, and MTU fields. The link status will show what speed and duplex it is running at only if the link is up. 

When changing any one of these settings, it is possible to see downtime ranging up to a minute, depending on hardware, traffic on the link, and load on the device. This is because changing these settings involves not only changing software level flags but also changing some information on the driver and hardware level as well. The link might drop for a few moments, and the web UI might take some time to refresh after the first change is made, but it should come back promptly.

This can also be done through the CLI with the following commands from the configuration mode of the CLI (en / conf t): 

interface [name] speed [speed]
interface [name] duplex [full | half]
interface [name] mtu [MTU]