Reference Guide

448 | Interfaces
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For the purposes of diagnostics, the major difference between the E-Series platforms is the number of port
pipes per slot.
• E1200 and E600—Each slot has two port-pipes. Each portpipe has nine 3.125Gbps channels to the
backplane, one to each SFM.
• E300—Each slot has one portpipe. Each port-pipe has eight 3.125Gbps channels to the backplane,
with four channels to each SFM.
Table 21-50 presents these platform differences again.
Auto-Negotiation on Ethernet Interfaces
Setting speed and duplex mode of Ethernet Interfaces
By default, auto-negotiation of speed and duplex mode is enabled on 10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet
interfaces. Only 10GE interfaces do not support auto-negotiation. When using 10GE interfaces, verify that
the settings on the connecting devices are set to no auto-negotiation.
The local interface and the directly connected remote interface must have the same setting, and
auto-negotiation is the easiest way to accomplish that, as long as the remote interface is capable of
auto-negotiation.
Note: As a best practice, Dell Force10 recommends keeping auto-negotiation enabled. Auto-negotiation
should only be disabled on switch ports that attach to devices not capable of supporting negotiation or
where connectivity issues arise from interoperability issues.
Note: All references to the E1200 in this section include the E1200i-AC and E1200i-DC. References to
E600 include the E600i.
Table 21-50. Platform Differences Concerning Port-pipes
Chassis Type
Port-pipes
/ Slot
Channels /
Port-pipe
Capacity of Each
Channel (Gbps)
Raw Slot Capacity
(Gbps)
E1200/E1200i-AC/DC 2 9 3.125 56.25
E600/E600i 2 9 3.125 56.25
E300 1 8 3.125 25
Note: Starting with FTOS 7.8.1.0, when a copper SFP2 module with catalog number GP-SFP2-1T is used
in the S25P model of the S-Series, its speed can be manually set with the speed command. When the
speed is set to 10 or 100 Mbps, the duplex command can also be executed.