User guide

Connector Types

Device Reference Pages specify the supported connector type where appropriate. All

network devices are assumed to work at 10 Mbps only, unless otherwise speciﬁed in

the Device Reference Pages. Following are network connectors and the media they

support.

Connector

Supported

Media Comments Speed

RJ-45 10BASE-T Category-3 Twisted Pair cable 10 Mbps

RJ-45 100BASE-TX Category-5 Twisted Pair cable 100 Mbps

BNC 10BASE2 Coax cable (“Thin” Ethernet cable) 10 Mbps

AUI 10BASE5 Shielded Twisted Pair (“Thick” Ethernet

cable)

10 Mbps

100–Mbps Ethernet Performance

Some PCI motherboards contain DMA chipsets that are unable to support 100-Mbps

Fast Ethernet. The Solaris environment does not support 100-Mbps PCI network

operation on systems containing the slow chipsets. This problem affects PCI cards

only.

These chipsets are known to exhibit this problem:

82430LX (Mercury)

82450GX (Orion) (A and B steppings only)

These chipsets do not exhibit this problem:

82430NX (Neptune)

82430FX (Triton)

82430HX (Triton II)

82440FX (Natoma)

82450GX (Orion) (C0 stepping and later)

In particular, PCI cards supported by the dnet, iprb, and elx drivers don’t

perform well on machines with the problem chipsets. If 100-Mbps operation is

required on such a machine, it is best to use a non-PCI Ethernet controller. It is also

possible that PCI cards supported by the ieef driver, which have larger FIFOs, may

function adequately. You must decide whether the performance on a particular

machine is adequate for the intended purpose.

Conﬁguring Devices 9