I really try to keep up with my blog and post on a daily basis but there are those days where you can't even fathom sitting down for 5 minutes. Friday was one of those days. It all started around 9 AM.
The night before I completed a cable pull in anticipation of our new network-able office photocopier. Before doing the cable pull I eyeballed how much cable I would need. Yes, eyeballed is a proper verb. I'll admit, it was a bit lazy, I should have measured, but I used to "eyeball" all the time when I worked for MFX Internet and I was always pretty close to the mark but when I was off, I was almost always OVER, which was no big deal since I could just chop off the extra and then terminate it. Well, this time I was short, by about four feet. The solution, a coupler and an extra few feet of cable. This means a trip to Staples.
Friday morning, I wait around for Staples to open up at 9 AM. For me, 9 AM is late..so I kind of just lounge around..eat an extra pop tart..you know..hang out.
9 AM I get to Staples, grab my coupler and my cable..head to the counter. I pull the school department's Staples credit card out of my wallet and hand it to the cashier. The proper protocol with this credit account requires the cashier to call in the order with a PO number. So, as I wait for her to complete this, I talk to the store manager. After a couple of minutes..she hands me the card back and tells me they wouldn't let the transaction go through. Uh..what? I've purchased hundreds of dollars of merchandise from that store with that very card..all I want now is $20 worth of stuff..and you're telling me no. Of course, the administrative secretary is on vacation..but I make the call anyway. As I look at my phone I notice I have a call from the school with a voice mail..and some email. The voice mail is my superintendent explaining some problems with his mail that he's having..to him his email is broken..to me...sounds like an network issue. I call him back and tell him I'll look at it when I get in. Next, I check my email...there's a message from the HS secretary telling me that the ES secretary can't log into the network. Now I start to worry. On the way to work I'm trying to think of what could be causing the entire ES to lose its network connection. I come into the building..hear another tale of how someone has no network access...and I head straight to the switch cabinet with my laptop.
Above is the photo I took of my switch cabinet a while back. It's a horrid mess and I've never really had the opportunity to clean it up. So, yes, I had to troubleshoot a network connection in THAT cat 5 spaghetti. Eventually I got annoyed...it was really hard track down the problem. Sometimes in life, especially if you're a technician..it's easier to just tear everything down..and rebuild it from scratch. This way you can test things as you go along and figure out where the problem is (at first I was suspecting a loopback issue somewhere on the network..or maybe a NIC that was chattering..something of that nature). So I broke it down. I took every cable out, made note of where everything was, took out all the switches and started from scratch. By the time I was done, the only thing left in that cabinet was the fiber transciever(where the connection comes from) and the UPS. I inserted a brand new 16 port switch to do my testing on and plugged in 3 computers that I could monitor the ping reports on. I plugged my macbook in and started watching the connection closely. After about 15 minutes I noticed that the connection started going wonky again..so one by one I started removing the computers I was monitoring. Eventually I was down to having only the cable from the transciever and my Mac plugged into the switch. I skipped the switch altogether and plugged the transciever directly into my Mac..and voila..doing the same thing. I move the CAT 5 cable to get it out of my way..whoops...look..the connection came back. Yep..bad cable. I replaced it and the connection was fine all weekend. I of course, had to rebuild my cabinet..but I didn't mind. It looks a lot better now. I will get a picture of it up soon. Isn't it amazing how something as simple as ethernet cable can completely ruin your day?
EDIT: Here is the after photo:
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