Add Interface type 10BASE-T to save power #21508
Description
NetBox version
v4.5.3
Feature type
Change to existing functionality
Proposed functionality
Add 10BASE-T 802.3i-1990 (CL14) interface type so that interface speed can be manually set to 10Mbit/s.
Use case
There are many devices that either do not support Energy-Efficient Ethernet (EEE) (IEEE 802.3az) at all or do not support it properly. The same power saving can be achieved by forcing the link to be (negotiated as) 10BASE-T because 10BASE-T does not transmit idle frames. For many devices that do not require much bandwidth, this has basically no downsides. Think PDU, UPS, management ports, and a lot more.
I just confirmed this with a PDU that does not support EEE. Forcing it to 10BASE-T saves 0.4 Watt compared to 100BASE-TX.
So I would like to be able to set the interface type as 10BASE-T on a "Device" in NetBox. The "Device Type" will stay 100BASE-TX. I need that support to properly model the real world and use NetBox to push this interface config to switches and devices.
In #5318 this was already suggested but without a good reason other than supporting decade old hardware. Please reconsider.
Side note: Ideally, auto negotiation would be limited to 10BASE-T via ethtool -s ens7 advertise 0x003 to avoid duplex mismatch.
Database changes
No.
External dependencies
No.