Are you sure your modem (or whatever you have for an internet connection) is healthy after the lightning strike? Have you ran a continual ping test out to one of your other sites?
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Browse All TopicsLast week we had a lightning strike hit the building. Some machine and devices were affected, but most were fine. One of the devices that no longer works is our router. It was a Cisco 870. I replaced it with a Linksys that we had sitting on a shelf. It is a Linksys RT31P2. It was easy to setup and got us back up and going fast.
However, there seems to be a problem. We have two other locations that we remotely access data through a program called PrintSmith. Since we changed out the router, users have been loosing the connection quite often, like they are timing out. We did not have this happening before the changing of the router.
What should I be looking for to fix this?
Thanks
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Bill,
I ran a continuous ping for about half an hour. Most of the time it was around 60 ms, but there were times that it jumped up to around 400 ms for about 10-15 pings and then went back. Then there was a fairly long period where it got up to around 800 ms. I'm not sure if that is a problem with our modem or just because of network traffic. Or if that is enough for the program to time out. Your thoughts?
Thanks
I wouldn't think 400-800 ms would be great enough to cause a connection timeout but it is possible. I'd start by checking to see if the PrintSmith application has a timeout setting and if so, is it adjustable. You may also want to put something like Wireshark or TCPDump on your network and watch the users' traffic - see if you can detect what and/or when the connection drops and what the traffic looks like when that drop occurs.
Actually, what this came down to was the amount of memory on the router. The new one that I installed did not have as much as the original, so the routing tables would drop off as it ran out of memory. I purchased a router with more memory for the routing tables and have not had any problems since then.
Thanks!
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by: stsonlinePosted on 2008-08-12 at 08:55:11ID: 22214409
I suspect your new router isn't configured to pass broadcast-type traffic.
Many printers use broadcast traffic to allow access, similar to arp broadcasts and DHCP servers - effectively, the printer keeps "talking" so users can easily browse and connect to the printer. Broadcast traffic doesn't cross routers - check your router manual for a command similar to Cisco's 'ip helper' command.