Can you isolate the phone line? Basically, remove it, altogether, and use a temporary long(er) network cable to connect the two switches. My thoughts are that you don't know the state of that line in the wall. It might be just fine for a phone, but it might run by electrical wires, or be damaged in a way that affects network traffic. So, a quick test without it to see if the problem persists. I suspect it will, but it'd be best to prove the wire is not the problem.
Have you tried swapping out the NICs in question? Intermittent behaviour like that can sometimes be caused by a faulty NIC. I saw something like that with a Compaq NIC once that refused to perform at 100BaseT, but would advertise it's capabilities as such (bad timing crystal). Speaking of which, have you checked to make sure you have the same connection speeds all the way through your network (remembering that the NIC to the cable modem will never perform better than 10BaseT - which is the top speed of the modem). You might want to manually set the drivers to use 10BaseT or 100BaseT as a test - sometimes the auto-detection fails. Are both switches rated for 100BaseT? 10/100? (I'd check out the connection speeds before swapping NICs - maybe save a little money). Hope this helps some. Shawn -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Jon Copeland Sent: Friday, March 19, 2004 5:39 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; CLUG General Subject: Re: [clug-talk] WAY OT: Network Weirdness of Note Hi Michael, Well this is making strides. Firstly, thanks for replying I appreciate it, Secondly, I tried what you suggested, connecting the two switches to each other with a very short (5m) CAT5 cable and the PC's could see each other and ping each other without packet loss. AKA no problem. Let me further explain the network setup. My house here in Cranston SE was built without networking in every room, there is also no tube from the top floor to the basement so I couldn't run a cable. The basement is where the firewall/server and the cable modem sits. The only other solution was to use the existing phone line in the one room upstairs, which is rated at CAT5, I simply re-wired it to 568B standards* to cascade (daisy-chain) two switches because there are two PC's upstairs but only one wire (the old telephone wire) So the switch was needed for this activity. Since each port on both switches supports auto-mdi/x there was no reason to make the cable a crossover cable. So the answer to your question is, the length of the cable between the two switches is about 35ft. The SMC-EZ6505TX-CA switch was purchased from london drugs and the Eusso was purchased from techtronics, both switches operate perfectly when used standalone, IE no cascading. -j- *568B = from left to right - orange-white / orange / green-white / blue / blue-white / green / brown-white / brown Michael Petch wrote: > Hooking up 2 switches together generally is not a problem. > > But I have to ask. What is the length of cable between switch 1 and 2? > I'm thinking that if one of the switches is not boosting the signal that > the intermittent problems might be related to the length of one of the > cables. Would be curious to know what types of lengths we are talking > about. And whether it is possible to connect the 2 switches up (As a > test) sitting next to one another with a very short cat5 cable. > > Mike > > On Fri, 2004-03-19 at 15:36, Jon Copeland wrote: > >>I'm having some difficulty finding out what could be the problem in the >>following scenario. >> >>http://members.shaw.ca/jonno/Images/misc/lan_diagram.jpg >> >>Switch1 is attached to Switch2 via a straight CAT5 cable, the Switches >>each have Auto mdi/mdix capability and are both different brands (SMC 5 >>Port and Eusso 5 port). Any PC attached to Switch1 that tries to ping >>the server will receive intermittent replies. >> >>http://members.shaw.ca/jonno/Images/misc/the_ping_results.JPG >> >> From the server you can ping anything on the internet. It has 2 NICs >>in it, one connected to the cable modem and the other connected to >>Switch2 (eth0 and eth1 respectively) (NOTE: The server is *NOT* where >>the problem lies, my suspicions lie with the communication between the >>two switches.) <-- The reason for these suspicions is because when I >>plug the CAT5 cable that connects these two switches directly into the >>cable modem I can get an IP address from my ISP and browse the internet >>normally. This is how I'm able to send this message. (The cabling is >>fine, all the wiring has been crimped according to the 568B wiring >>standard. And since I can see the internet when Switch1 is directly >>attached to the cable modem it can't be a wiring problem between Switch1 >>and the Cable Modem or Server) >> >>Since both Switches support auto-crossover (mdi/x) on each port they >>should be able to be daisy-chained together using a normal cable (I've >>also tried a crossover cable). So in essence any PC's connected to >>Switch1 *should* be able to talk to any PC's connected to Switch2. And >>this is not what is happening, well, the ping replies shown above tell >>us that communication between Switch1 and the server is happening >>intermittently for some obscure reason. This is where the problem is. >> >>I have swopped the two Switches around and I get the same problem. My >>conclusions lead me to believe that the problem arises when the two >>switches are connected with each other, IE, any PC on Switch1 cannot >>*fully* talk with any PC on Switch2. >> >>Previous to this the network was working fine as all the PC'S including >>the server were attached to one Switch so there was no 'daisy-chaining' >>involved. >> >>Is there something that I'm missing out or something that I'm not doing? >> >>-j- >> >> >>_______________________________________________ >>clug-talk mailing list >>[EMAIL PROTECTED] >>http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca _______________________________________________ clug-talk mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://clug.ca/mailman/listinfo/clug-talk_clug.ca
