Technical Service Bulletin
What you may see
- The printer network adapter* experiences difficulty with negotiating network speed and duplex settings because Autonegotiate is turned off on a switch.
- No activity light on the Ethernet port.
* Also known as the NIC, INA, print server, or Ethernet card.
Affected Products
Any printer or MFP that has the ability to force network connection speeds.
Suggested Remedy
This remedy can work to both harm and help your situation under certain conditions. See Negotiation Scenarios below.
Print out a network settings page and locate the Speed, Duplex values at the top of the page.
Note: If the printer is able to communicate on the network, you can also access the network settings page via the embedded web server under Reports, and then Print Server Setup Page.
Use this table to determine your next step.
| If next to Speed, Duplex... | And... | Then... |
|---|
You do not see the word (Auto) after the speed and duplex setting; someone has forced this value... | Status: Not Connected | Change the speed and duplex settings under the printer's Network SE Menu* to (AUTO). Contact Lexmark Technical Support if uncertain how to access this menu or perform this procedure. |
If you see the word (Auto) after the speed and duplex setting... | Status: Not Connected or device falling off the network. | Autonegotiate is turned ON. Consider the following: - Access the printer's Network SE Menu* and force connection speed to 10Mbps half-duplex or 100Mbps half-duplex.
- Investigate router, switch, cables, and all other network infrastructure possibilities.
|
* If you do not know how to gain access to the network SE menu, you will need to contact Lexmark Technical Support. This menu contains settings that can greatly affect performance.
Network settings page illustration
Warnings
- Forcing connection speed on the printer may improve or degrade network performance or connectivity; however, in certain circumstances, it may be the only way to get the printer to communicate on the network.
- The following are possible outcomes of forcing connection speed/duplex settings on the print server:
- The printer may become unstable on the network.
- The printer's performance may deteriorate if it is moved to a different network.
- The printer may cease to communicate on the network if it is moved to a different network.
Auto-Negotiation Scenarios
This table is provided to help the reader understand the behavior of Cisco's autonegotiation behavior.
| Scenario | Outcome |
|---|
The Autonegotiate setting on the switch is disabled or forced to no negotiation ('Duplex Mismatch'). | Disabling Autonegotiate will result in some speedat full duplex. Result: The printer may detect the speed but not the duplex setting, hence there may be an increase in network collisions, reduced speeds, and inconsistent network connectivity. |
A specific switch access port was forced to a specific speed ('Speed Mismatch'). | Forcing connection speed on the switch also disables Autonegotiate.Result: The printer simply never detects the speed and the result is a complete communication failure. |
Old network equipment with outdated firmware. Note: Original differences between different manufacturers' implementation of IEEE802.3u and interpretation of the Autonegotiate (AutoN) specification may require the connection speed to be forced. | This situation is not as common; however, it may be advisable to manually force connection speed/duplex settings on both network devices. |
Busy networks or network traffic overload. | Over saturated networks can lead to reduced printer performance or printing anomalies, but forcing the network connection speed should be considered an option of last resort. It also would require changing the Autonegotiate switch setting. |
Additional information
In 1999 the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) ratified IEEE 802.3ab. This new standard specified that Gigabit Ethernet requires autonegotiation, hence all network equipment manufacturers recommend using autonegotiation on all access ports.
'Duplex Mismatch' in brief
The following should be known:
- Full duplex indicates simultaneous in (receive) and out (transmittal) data flow.
- Half duplex allows only in or out data flow at any one time.
- If the half duplex device is in transmittal mode, it cannot receive data, and vice versa.
- The half duplex device will detect a collision if a full duplex device is sending data.
- The half duplex device will resend the frame if it detects a collision. Concurrently, the full duplex device receives truncated (incomplete) frames from the half duplex device and reports these frames as Frame Check Sequence (FCS) errors.
- Even acknowledgement packets with one-way data traffic may cause collisions.
- FCS errors on the full duplex end may signal a duplex mismatch.
- A TCP stream requires all packets sent to be acknowledged by the receiving device.
Press the Menus button.
Press the arrow next to Network/Ports.
Press the arrow next to Std. Network or Network 1.
Press the arrow next to Std. Network Setup or Network 1 Setup.
Using the keypad, press and hold down 9, 7 and 6 to gain access to the SE Menu.
Press the arrow next to MAC.
Press the arrow next to Set Card Speed.
Press the arrows to change to the desired speed and duplex setting; e.g., Auto; 10 Mbps half duplex; 10 Mbps full duplex; 100 Mbps half duplex; 100 Mbps full duplex.
Press Submit and observe Submitting Changes on the LCD.
LEGACY ID: TE340