HL2 switch compatibility

[Alexander Harvey]

I have a Hermes Lite 2 that works great if I have it connected directly to my laptop, but it fails to negotiate a link with my Netgear G5308P gigabit switch. I've tried several ports and cables that work with other devices to no avail.

Is there any special considerations about the HL2 and switch compatibility? I wasn't able to find documentation about this.

Thanks,

-Alex // KO4CEE

[Clifford Heath]

I believe that discovery relies on UDP broadcasts, and some gateways don’t forward those unless configured for it. Lower-level network switched and bridges do, of course.

Clifford Heath.

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["Christoph v. Wüllen"]

The HL2 also responds to a "routed" discovery packet, that is, a Packet

sent to its specific IP address. Strictly speaking, this violates the

HPSDR protocol but be relaxed, my Anan-7000 behaves the same way.

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[ron.ni...@gmail.com]

Some computers (various macOS and iOS versions, for instance) or network routers (with some firewall options enabled) won't forward UDP broadcasts, which typical OpenHPSDR METIS Protocol 1 negotiation to find an HL2 seems to require.

If you know the DHCP IP range that your router provides to its local subnet, you can do a very manual discovery search for the HL2's IP address.  Unplug the HL2 then ping every address in the IP range, plug the HL2 back in, wait for the LEDs to indicate it's network is up, then ping for any newly appearing IP address, which is likely the IP address of the HL2 just turned on.

If you can compile and run hl2_tcp (on GitHub), then you can also send directed (not broadcast) UDP discovery packets to an HL2 using the -d option.

> hl2_tcp -d 192.168.10.4

or use your suspected IP address. The HL2 will respond to any UDP discovery message, broadcast or directed.

73, Ron, N6YWU

[Clifford Heath]

You don't need to ping every IP address if you save the ARP table before and after. On Linux you can get that using the "arp" command.

Clifford Heath 

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[Alexander Harvey]

I must have been unclear in my original post. 

The HL2 will not negotiate a link with the switch. The lights on either side of the Ethernet cable do not light up. UDP broadcasting or IP routing don't come in to play. There isn't layer 1 yet.

[Steve Haynal]

Is your switch trying to negotiate at 10Mbs even though it is a gigabit switch? I don't think the HL2 will negotiate at 10Mbs. Have you confirmed with wireshark that there is no other activity between switch and HL2?

Do you see the same behavior for POE and nonPOE ports? The HL2 should not be used with a POE port.

73.

Steve

kf7o

[Alexander Harvey]

The switch negotiates gigabit with all my other devices. I tried several ports, PoE and non-PoE and the HL2 won't link up with any of them.
Is there any documentation about what the HL2 is compatible with? I don't recall reading anything about it being explicitly incompatible with PoE ports, and in my experience, non-PoE devices don't care, as those center taps aren't used for signals.

[Steve Haynal]

Hi Alexander,

This is the first report I've heard of a link negotiation problem with a particular switch. In the past, we've had some problems with the simple DHCP in the HL2 not handling some of the newer DHCP extensions some switches offer, but the link was established in those cases.

There is no code in the FPGA gateware regarding link negotiation. This is all handled in the hardware of the ksz9021 or ksz9031. If you want to debug this more, I suggest you check which part your HL2 has, download the datasheet, check the strap pin settings on your board versus the HL2 schematic, and see if there is any errata mentioning your issue. There is a serial interface on the MAC IC which you could probably gather some more debug data with a scope or logical analyzer, or by updating the FPGA gateware.

73,

Steve

kf7o