IBM PCI Netfinity 10/100 Fault Tolerant Adapter


IBM PCI Netfinity 10/100 Fault Tolerant Adapter

              FRU P/N    OPT P/N
 --------------------------------
 Adapter      25L4837    08L3341   See > ECA031
              31L4180


OPTION Kit Contents



Adapter Overview

The IBM Netfinity 10/100 Fault Tolerant Adapter paves the way to higher bandwidth operation and improved network performance, without disrupting the existing infrastructure.
It is easy to use this Plug and Play (PnP), 32-bit Busmaster PCI adapter.
Designed for flexibility, it runs at 10 Mbps or 100Mbps in full or half-duplex mode to support a variety of network configurations, ranging from conventional 10BASE-T to 100BASE-TX Ethernet environments.

The adapter:


About the Adapter Fault Tolerance Feature

The Fault Tolerant Adapter (FTA) feature, also known as redundant NIC, is a simple and effective approach to increase the availibility of server connections to Ethernet networks.
The IBM Netfinity 10/100 Fault Tolerant Adapter provides the ability to configure the system to perform link recovery to another link within the system in case of a cable, port or network error.

The links are configured in pairs, with one link designated as the primary link and the other as the secondary link.
The links within a system can be other IBM Netfinity 10/100 Fault Tolerant Adapters installed into the system's PCI slots or the link may be designed into the motherport of the system.
If a failure is detected on the primary link, the system will automatically switch operation to the secondary link.
Once the failure conditionassociated with the primary link is corrected, the sessions will be restored to the primary adapter.

NOTE: When one of the links in a pair is implemented as an adapter card and the other is implemented as part of the system motherboard, it is recommended that the adapter be configured as the primary link and the motherboard implementation be configured as the secondary link.

Some links implemented as part of the system motherboard are not able to work as part of a configured pair with the IBM Netfinity 10/100 Fault Tolerant Adapter.


Prerequisite Operating System PCI Updates

Please check with the operating system supplier for the latest information concerning required updates to support PCI adapters.
Some currently (1998) available operating systems are not PCI-aware, so the device drivers for the IBM Netfinity 10/100 Fault Tolerant Adapter are written to the PCI architected BIOS or register-level interfaces.


Using the Correct Adapter Cable

At 10 Mbps you can use category 3, 4, or 5 unshielded twisted-pair cable. Segmented length are limited to 100m (328 ft) with 10BASE-T for signal-timing reasons.

At 100 Mbps you can only use category 5 unshielded twisted-pair cable. Segment length are also limited to 100m (328 ft) with 100BASE-TX for signal-timing reasons.

The 100BASE-TX specifications support 100-Mbps transmission over two or four pairs of twisted-pair Ethernet cabling. In two-pair cabling, one pair of cables is used for transmission, and the other is used for reception and collision detection.


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