network problem

[Jacob Albretsen]

On Thursday, September 13, 2012 09:45:02 AM Merrill Oveson wrote:
 
> Anybody know anybody who could help me:
> 
> a) troubleshoot this.  I need to nail down the problem.
> 
> b) if indeed the problem is with the switches, recommend a switch
> manufacturer I not that impressed with NetGear.
> I called technical support and they said that I had to pay for
> technical support because the switches are more than a year old.
> And if my switches were indeed bad or going bad - tough luck - because
> they are more than a year old.
> 
> Do switches go bad?

Two things come to mind in my experience.  One was once I was having issues 
with a port on a managed switch. It turns out the port I was plugged into was 
set at some time to echo another port on the switch for something someone was 
troubleshooting a while back before I was hired and then forgot to turn it off.  
So check to make sure the port is not set to something unexpected.

The other is cabling.  When I was first hired at my job, the cabling for the 
office was a nightmare in the server room.  I set out to clean it up.  We had a 
couple of different switches and a cable between them to extend the number of 
other cables we could plug into the office network. Turns out if you have such a 
mess that you accidentally put two cables connecting the switches instead of 
one, the Cisco could handle that fine, the Dlink freaked out.

- Jake