Attaching Your Station to an Ethernet Network

If your transceiver model has status lights, make sure that the power light on the transceiver comes on when you attach the AUI cable to your workstation and the transceiver. This light indicates that the Ethernet card or the integral Ethernet controller is alive. Your station must be powered on to activate the power light on the transceiver. You may also see another light, which indicates that your link to the network is activated.

If the power light on the transceiver is lit or if your transceiver or MAU has no lights, bring your station back up into multiuser mode now.

Checking Your Ethernet Connection

1. Obtain the hostname of at least one reliable station on the local area network to which your system is connected. If possible, get the fully qualified hostname and the IP address. (For example, a hostname might be hancock, and the fully qualified hostname might be hancock.corp.gen.com, while the IP address might be 192.70.3.56.) It is important that the station you select has a reliable Ethernet connection and that it is up and running.

2. Once you have obtained a hostname and IP address, give the command

   ping -r hostname

   You should see a series of records indicating the returned packets from the remote host. For example (using our example system):

   PING hancock (192.70.3.56): 56 data bytes

   64 bytes from 192.70.3.56: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=2 ms
64 bytes from 192.70.3.56: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=2 ms
64 bytes from 192.70.3.56: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=2 ms
64 bytes from 192.70.3.56: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=2 ms
64 bytes from 192.70.3.56: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=2 ms

3. Press <Ctrl>-C or your Delete key to stop the ping command. You see the tallied results of the ping command. For example:

   ----hancock PING Statistics----

   5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss

   round-trip min/avg/max = 2/2/2 ms

4. If your network connection is working, you should see results comparable to those above. Your ping results should show 0% packet loss and an equal number of packets transmitted and received. If some packets are being lost, the first thing you should check is the tightness and quality of the cable connections. Loose cables are frequently the cause of lost packets. The round-trip time factors are a function of the size and general load of your network, and not necessarily an indication of a problem with your Ethernet connection.

1. Try to ping the station by its IP address. For example, using our sample host hancock, use the command

   ping -r 192.70.3.56

2. Try to ping a different station on your local network.

3. Check the network configuration on your system with the netstat -in command. You should see information similar to this:

   Name Mtu Network Address Ipkts Ierrs Opkts Oerrs

   ec0 1500 192.70.3 192.70.3.9 18 0 18 0

   The ec0 entry indicates your primary Ethernet connection. The Ipkts and Opkts fields indicate the number of inbound and outbound packets the network interface has processed. The Ierrs and Oerrs fields indicate the number of errors in input and output, respectively.

   For the purposes of this troubleshooting session, though, check that the portion of the IP address shown under the Network heading match the IP address of the hostname that you attempted to ping. If the network addresses are not the same, the station is on a different network and the ping likely failed for that reason. Find a system to ping that is on your immediate local network.

4. Check the /var/adm/SYSLOG file for Ethernet error messages.

5. Check to ensure that other stations are operating normally on the local network.

6. Check to ensure that the correct software (eoe2.sw.tcp) package has been installed on your system.

7. Check the physical connections to the Ethernet cables and transceivers for tightness and connection. A good indicator is the status light display on your transceiver (if your transceiver has these lights). If your Ethernet hardware is loose or disconnected, the /var/adm/SYSLOG file and your system console should both show messages such as

   ec0: no carrier: check Ethernet cable

8. If all connections are tight and you still receive errors, replace the pieces of the Ethernet connection outside your system (the cable and transceiver). Different transceivers require different wire connections, and sometimes the wrong cables are used.

9. If you receive a message indicating that another host has the same IP address, find out which host has the same address, and determine which host has set their address incorrectly. (It is more likely that the same address was accidentally assigned to a second system, or that the new system being tested incorrectly set the address.)