[AusNOG] A question for carriers on autoneg

[Chris Ricks]

Hi all,

First of all, this question is not one of criticism or anything of the sort - it's simply addressing an observation I've made over the last decade or so. As always, I'm happy to be pointed in the right direction for reading historical posts on this subject

Almost without exception, any time a service is handed off over CAT5e/CAT6, the port parameters are hard set and auto-negotiation disabled. Most recently this was the case on a service handed off from a newly deployed Juniper switch to an EX4200 switch on our end. In another recent experience, a carrier worked with us to get a link up and, in spite of serious attempts to deliver the link through hard-setting of link parameters, we could only get the stability required via auto-negotiation.

I'm curious as to the thinking around auto negotiation being on or off for service handoff from list participants and their reasoning around the choice. 

Humble regards,

Chris