[TriLUG] ethernet ports on Linksys wrt54g are autosense

[Joseph Mack]

(This may not be news to some of you but I didn't know it).

The wrt54g wap comes with 4 ethernet ports for your LAN. There
are no link LEDs on the ports (which didn't impress me). Also
there was no X - straight switch on one of the ports to allow
me to daisy chain without a crossover cable (this didn't
impress me either). I do a wifi event in a large field and 
I need to have the equivalent of a hub every 100m or so
to get to the other side. If I couldn't daisy chain the wrt54g's
then I would need to have a hub/switch with every wrt54g.
Having 3 wap11's I wasn't expecting much from LinkSys in 
the wrt54g and what I saw fitted my expectations.

So I called up Intrex about the switches that someone on
this list had recommended to find that the Intrex switches 
didn't have an X - straight switch because they didn't need 
one - all the ports were autosense. I didn't know such things 
existed and it occured to me to test the wrt54g ports for 
autosense. 

It turns out that _all_ the LAN ports on the wrt54g are autosense.
You can plug 2 wrt54g's together and ping through both of them to
a 3rd device. I did this test to see if the two devices would
flap, but they appear not to - one of them must decide to be 
straight and the other crossover.

Presumably this is information is in the wrt54g manual, but the 
manuals for the wap11 were filled with pictures of an adoring wife and
husband whose life had been filled with joy by their wap11 and was
devoid of technical information, so I didn't bother with the 
wrt54g manual.

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack PhD, High Performance Computing & Scientific Visualization
LMIT, Supporting the EPA Research Triangle Park, NC 919-541-0007
Federal Contact - John B. Smith 919-541-1087 - smith.johnb at epa.gov