Inquiry Regarding mlxlink Utility Command and Connection Stability Assessment Methods

[emb3]

I am seeking detailed information regarding the mlxlink utility command provided by Mellanox. Specifically, I would like to understand the following aspects:

1. What functionality does the mlxlink utility command offer?
2. Does this utility provide insights into the connection stability between a Mellanox NIC and the cable connected to its port, or does it also assess the connection stability between the Mellanox NIC and the device connected at the other end of the cable?
3. Is there a method to determine the connection stability between a Mellanox NIC and a device connected through a cable? If so, how does the utility communicate with the device at the other end to provide this information?
   • Does it send any specific requests?
   • What type of requests are sent?
   • Which protocol is used for this communication?
   • On what basis does the utility determine connection stability?

Additionally, I am interested in knowing if there are any alternative methods or tools other than mlxlink to ascertain connection stability. If such alternatives exist, how do they validate the connection stability?

Your insights on these questions would be highly valuable.

[namrata1]

Hi emb3,

Thank you for posting your query on NVIDIA Community.

1. For details on mlxlink Utility, please refer the following section part of MFT User Manual —> mlxlink Utility - NVIDIA Docs
2. mlxlink allows to query the ports local to the host on which it is running. However, in order to access details of remote NVIDIA devices, following section can be used as reference from the same User Manual —> Remote Access to NVIDIA Devices - NVIDIA Docs
3. This requires additional internal escalation and a valid support Entitlement will be needed. In addition, unfortunately, not all information is publicly available.
4. For an alternate approach for validating on link status, tools/commands such as “ethtool” , “ip link” can be used.

Thanks,
Namrata.