Broken yellow Ethernet light?

[MarkHaysHarris777]

hi,  believe it or not, there is no standard for what the lights on an RJ45 connector mean;  other than a blinking light usually means activity.

Each vendor is free to use whatever scheme that they determine ;  sometimes the light color indicates speed ( whether it is on, solid, blinking etc ) see your manual.  Sometimes , but not always , the green light is a link light ( solid ) and the yellow light is an activity light.

I have a pre production Rock64 board , as an example , where the green light is a slow steady blink ( its Gbe plugged into a Gbe switch at full  1000 ).  The yellow light blinks clearly with activity on the comm line ( random fast blinking ).

I have a production Rock64 board, as another example , where the green light is on solid  ( it is also Gbe plugged into a Gbe switch at full 1000 ).  The yellow light blinks with activity also ( random fast blinking ).

My PineA64-B server has slow blinking green,  fast random blinking yellow.

My PineA64-A desk machine has slow blinking green,  fast random blinking yellow.

My switches have three rows of lights... all green;  top row is activity on the port;  next two rows are link lights where one LED means 10|100 link and two lights means 1000 link.


So far there is one report of a Rock64 green LED that does not light at all... and one report ( yours ) where the yellow light does not light at all;  if the lights do not ever light, there is a defect in the magjack and the LED is just "out"  ( happens ).

The bottom line is that there is nothing "normal" about the LED(s) on an ethernet port... but the LED(s) should be working in any case on the Rock64.  I know that must be irritating, but if it works otherwise, its a pretty minor issue really.