First off, let me say that fiber optic connections using Procurve equipment do not auto-negotiate.
And yet, there is a setting to set your mini-GBIC (SFP) to 100-half, 100-full, 1000-half, 1000-full, and even auto-1000.
This is retarded. Fiber by it’s very nature is ONLY full-duplex; one strand for transmit, one for receive.
This being said I feel like you should NEVER set your fiber to anything other than ‘auto’. Sure, you can set both ends to 1000-full and it will work just fine…… what of what benefit is it? I’ve taken snapshots of interface stats, and compared between connections that are hard set to 1000-full, vs. those simply set to ‘auto’. There was NO difference whatsoever; and this was not over just a few days or weeks, but months. So then of what benefit is setting your interfaces to 1000-full? None, in my opinion. It’s just a few more lines of code that have to maintained. The KISS principle should be applied in all possible areas.
Oh and BTW, if one end of your fiber is set to 1000-full and the other to auto, you will NOT get a link. I can’t tell you of how many new installs this has bitten me.
