Switch issues
Experts! I would appreciate your feedback if any of you have run into this issue or have some clue as to what else I should be troubleshooting.
The scenario is that on Friday, I connected two wall jacks to one of our network switches, and about the same time, a user reported that they lost all connectivity.
After troubleshooting, I found that the line going from our network switch to a small switch at the user's desk had connectivity, but when you plug it into her switch, there's no connectivity. It doesn't assign any IP, and if you set the IP manually, it still has no connectivity. I swapped the smaller switch, but surprisingly, ran into the same issue.
I might understand if there were an issue with the network switch that was somehow caused by connecting the two jacks that I did (although I tried disconnecting them again, which had no affect), but the fact that the line coming into the smaller switch works just fine if you connect it directly to a computer is puzzling me.
To add another level of mystery, if I connect the same smaller switch to a different line coming in from the larger network switch, everything works as expected. So this one has me a bit stumped.
Am I missing something obvious? Any constructive feedback you may have to offer would be appreciated.
The scenario is that on Friday, I connected two wall jacks to one of our network switches, and about the same time, a user reported that they lost all connectivity.
After troubleshooting, I found that the line going from our network switch to a small switch at the user's desk had connectivity, but when you plug it into her switch, there's no connectivity. It doesn't assign any IP, and if you set the IP manually, it still has no connectivity. I swapped the smaller switch, but surprisingly, ran into the same issue.
I might understand if there were an issue with the network switch that was somehow caused by connecting the two jacks that I did (although I tried disconnecting them again, which had no affect), but the fact that the line coming into the smaller switch works just fine if you connect it directly to a computer is puzzling me.
To add another level of mystery, if I connect the same smaller switch to a different line coming in from the larger network switch, everything works as expected. So this one has me a bit stumped.
Am I missing something obvious? Any constructive feedback you may have to offer would be appreciated.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
I'm glad you mentioned that because another twist I forgot to mention is that I inherited this cabling, and this particular drop isn't labeled at all, so I don't even know which port on the network switch that it's connected to. Awesome, right? So while I do have a cable tester, I wouldn't know which cable to test!
That aside, she's been using this same drop for years, so I can't imagine cable length all of a sudden becoming an issue, and even if it somehow were, this particular cable run is probably closer to about 100 feet or less.
That aside, she's been using this same drop for years, so I can't imagine cable length all of a sudden becoming an issue, and even if it somehow were, this particular cable run is probably closer to about 100 feet or less.
What kind of switches are they?
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
@tolinrome: I'm sorry, I should clarify that the jacks didn't have any equipment connected to them at the time. All I was doing was connecting the jacks to the switch so that they'd have connectivity. So essentially, I was just connecting a cable that wasn't connected to anything yet. It's seemingly insignificant, but the timing seemed too coincidental not to mention. Plus, even if I disconnect those jacks, the issue persists.
Regarding the smaller switch, I'm not sure why it'd need a crossover cable, especially given that the drop it's been using has been functioning for years. Would you mind elaborating on that one?
The smaller switch is a TrendNet TE100-S80g, which is just a dumb switch. So to my knowledge, there isn't really any configuration.
Regarding the smaller switch, I'm not sure why it'd need a crossover cable, especially given that the drop it's been using has been functioning for years. Would you mind elaborating on that one?
The smaller switch is a TrendNet TE100-S80g, which is just a dumb switch. So to my knowledge, there isn't really any configuration.
"auto-uplinks to any other switches on the network, no crossover cables needed"
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
@Joshua G: The larger switch is either a Linksys SGE2010P or a Cisco SG200-50P, and the smaller switch is a TrendNet TE100-S80g dumb switch.
@pony10us: Yeah, I might have some manual labor ahead of me since that would involve testing about 75 ports, and I'd be disconnecting random users in the process if I did it during normal business hours. That aside though, wouldn't I be looking for ports that don't have connectivity on them, given that connectivity is the issue? If I only test jacks that don't have any connectivity on them, that'd whittle things down significantly and shouldn't interrupt any user connectivity.
I should mention that on the smaller dumb switch, when I plug the cable in that comes from the larger switch, the '100MBps' light would flash once or twice and the 'LINK/ACT' light would flash maybe once and then go dark. So the only traffic I see on the side of the dumb switch are from the devices connected to it (but not from switch to switch).
@ALL: Get this, it randomly started working again. Now I'm really puzzled. I've checked connections repeatedly throughout this process to see if maybe there was a faulty cable or a loose connection of some sort, but I've never seen any change in connectivity. Now that it's working, I can't even duplicate the issue though - wiggling the cable, using a different port, or power-cycling the smaller switch. So being that I never understood the source of the issue to begin with, I have no guarantee that the issue won't resurface. So at this point, the only solid plan I have is to test until I find which port she's connected to on the network switch(es) and see if there are any apparent issues with that particular port. Any other advice?
@pony10us: Yeah, I might have some manual labor ahead of me since that would involve testing about 75 ports, and I'd be disconnecting random users in the process if I did it during normal business hours. That aside though, wouldn't I be looking for ports that don't have connectivity on them, given that connectivity is the issue? If I only test jacks that don't have any connectivity on them, that'd whittle things down significantly and shouldn't interrupt any user connectivity.
I should mention that on the smaller dumb switch, when I plug the cable in that comes from the larger switch, the '100MBps' light would flash once or twice and the 'LINK/ACT' light would flash maybe once and then go dark. So the only traffic I see on the side of the dumb switch are from the devices connected to it (but not from switch to switch).
@ALL: Get this, it randomly started working again. Now I'm really puzzled. I've checked connections repeatedly throughout this process to see if maybe there was a faulty cable or a loose connection of some sort, but I've never seen any change in connectivity. Now that it's working, I can't even duplicate the issue though - wiggling the cable, using a different port, or power-cycling the smaller switch. So being that I never understood the source of the issue to begin with, I have no guarantee that the issue won't resurface. So at this point, the only solid plan I have is to test until I find which port she's connected to on the network switch(es) and see if there are any apparent issues with that particular port. Any other advice?
ASKER
@tolinrome: It may well just be a cable issue that I'm just not able to replicate, but even when I was having issues with it, it worked just fine if I plugged it directly into a computer, which would seem to rule that out, wouldn't it?
ASKER
Scratch that, I was able to momentarily duplicate the issue when I was moving the cable around, so it's looking as though it was just a faulty cable. Thank you all for your helpful input in troubleshooting this though.
One problem at least lies between the smaller switch at the users desk and the main one youre mentioning. You need to make sure its a crossover cable between these two switches. Also, how is this small switch configured?