PE1950, Broadcom NetXtreme II (BCM5708), and duplex

[Jeff Abbott]

Folks,

We've got a PowerEdge 1950, running CentOS 4.4, with the BCM5708  
Gigabit Ethernet NIC, and I was noticing exceptionally poor network  
performance -- roughly 140KB/s when doing an scp transfer.  I found  
the link was running in half-duplex mode, and when I tried to force  
it to full duplex using mii-tool, the interface hung.  This turned  
out to be a bad cable, so I replaced that and was then able to force  
the NIC into full duplex mode, which gave me the transfer rate I was  
expecting (~11MB/s).  It doesn't persist past reboots, however, and  
this seems like the sort of thing that should Just Work without my  
having to tell it what to do.  I tried different ports on our switch,  
including one that I know works fine with full duplex on another  
system (with an Intel E1000 NIC), along with different cables, all of  
which had no effect.

Is there something I'm missing?

Thanks,
Jeff