[TriLUG] OT: failed 10/100 switch?

[Greg Brown]

Some switches have a special "crossover" port that is designed to connect to 
an upstream switch, you might want to check to see that one of the ports in 
not labled "crossover" or something like it.

The problem could also be caused by the auto-detect feature on your ethernet 
card. On nearly all NIC cards you can set the port to be auto-detect, 100 meg 
half or full duplex, or 10 meg half or full duplex.  Keep in mind that many 
10/100 swithes have software settings (or even jumper settings) to go between 
10 and 100 meg operation.  If your switch is set to 100 meg via  a 
software switch and your card on your PC is set to 10 meg half or full (i.e. 
NOT auto-detect) then your card will not communicate with the switch.  I'm 
not sure how to check this on a Win98 machine, but under win2k it's under 
properties of the card in question.

Because your other machines are working at 100 meg I'd lean towards the 
software setting on your ethernet card in your Win98 machine at this point as 
the suspect.

I've spent years and years dealing with layer 2 issues so if it's not a 
problem with auto-detect try to ping 127.0.0.1 from the offending machine.  
This should tell you if your IP stack is functioning properly.   

Let me know if your card still doesn't workr checking the settings.

Greg


On Friday 11 October 2002 08:55 am, you wrote:
> Just wondering if anyone has ideas here...
>
> I bought a cheapo 10/100 switch for home to replace my old 10MB hub. The
> switch connects two desktop machines (one Win98, one Debian) and one
> firewall/router/etc. (debian).  All have 10/100 cards in them (IBM eepros
> in the debian machines, HP something or other in the Win98) and the
> network works fine on the 10MB hub.
>
> I switched over to the 10/100 switch and communication with the Win98
> machine died.  The link LED came on, and I rebooted the Win98 machine
> (since that's how you usually fix those :)), and still nothing. Moving the
> plugs back to the hub fixed everything.
>
> Am I looking at a DOA switch, or could something else be going on?
>
> Thanks.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andrew J Perrin - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin
> Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
> clists at perrin.socsci.unc.edu * andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu
>
>
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