[ltp] meaning of flashing light on Ethernet port (R40e)

Matt Graham linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Sun, 25 Jan 2004 21:27:40 -0500


On Sunday 25 January 2004 17:54, after a long battle with technology, 
Adrian Midgley wrote:
> Does a flashing light on the ethernet port indicate packets on the
> wire, IE independent of the machine the network interface is built
> into, or does it indicate activity trying to go outward, from the
> machine to the network?

AFAICT, it's Ethernet packets on the wire.  If I take my small LAN (run 
off a Linksys switch) and do "killall -TERM dhcpcd" on one machine, 
then do "dhcpcd -d eth0" on that same machine, the switch shows 
activity on all ports (DHCP broadcast response?  I didn't request one)  
Pinging one machine from another by IP address shows activity on only 
those 2 machines; the other lights stay steady.  Pinging an unreachable 
IP (10.0.0.1; I use the 192.168.0.0 private range) shows activity on 
the machine I start the ping from and the machine serving as the 
gateway.

I don't know if this'll help--maybe you could explain more fully what it 
is you need to know?  YMMV if you're using a hub rather than a switch, 
of course.

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