Doodles from Wardle

Welcome to Networking Hell – Part2 September 24, 2006

Friday evening, time to do some of those jobs that you can’t do when the kids and teachers are in.  Off to the new ICT suite, ICT6 (or 666 as its fast becomeing) to setup a scanner.

The machines are all on, helps that the sparks have now put the correct rated breakers so that they don’t blow when you turn the machines on.  So i grab the keyboard of the choosen one and login or don’t as is the case.  Scratch head, check cables and link lights.  Look at the comms cabinet, all seems fine.  Uplink light on green, nothing obvious.  Try another Pc, the same.  Another and another, nothing.  Just then super Stewie arrives to say that machines in ICT 1 anrn’t connecting to the domain.

Off we go via another lab (working) to check the comms links in finance (working) to look for any looped cables that may be causeing a packet storm.  Nothing, the main comms seems ok, lights greena and steady.  As no one is in we power them all down and back up, still no links in ICT6 but some random PC’s work in ICT1.

More head scratching and peering at lables on patch panels.  OK now looks like half the PC’s in ICT1 are patched to one switch and the other half to a different one.  Trace the uplink to ICT6 and bingo, one switch may be out of action.  Switch some cables around and yes, switch 3 is all lights but nobody home.  That means that tomorrow 50 ports will be out of action and i have no replacement unit