Network

Someone emailed me today that they were having trouble with a network printer. Half the time they hit print, it just didn't print. The other half of the time it seemed to work fine.

I tried pinging the printer and found dropped packets. This is yet another time where ping flood saved the day. The printer answered pings, but would drop 4% of packets when a ping flood was thrown at it. Quick way to determine that the network connection is shit. This can save hours of diagnostics and trial and error replacements.

Great, I swapped out the switch that was collecting dust beneath the table upon which the printer sat. The printer began printing without issue. The computer next to it, however began acting as though the cable were pulled from the back of the computer every 12 seconds. This rendered the computer almost usable.

The computer had two network jacks on the back, neither of which seemed to work. It seemed to work a minute ago. All I did was try a different switch. I hadn't paid any attention to how well the network connection to said computer worked before pulling the buggered switch. It turned out that having two network connections was merely a distraction. I took time to get the connector on the motherboard working only to find that the second auxiliary NIC had been added for a reason. Killed an hour.

Booting the computer in Linux via a live CD solved the IP problem. This seems to suggest that the issue is due to a software issue with XP. Perhaps a driver update or reinstall would top it up and send me on my why with a whistle. ... No.

It turned out that the original switch had one problem and the replacement switch had another. Once I grabbed a new in the box switch and placed it, all problems seemed to vanish as though they never happened. There goes three hours of my life I will not get back.

The moral of this story is that computers suck. At least I got the satisfaction of tossing the two old switches in the trash with a thump. That was satisfying.