Bad Ethernet Outlet? How?

Westwood

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Nov 17, 2012
Messages
10,918
Bear with me here. I'm not the most IT savvy guy.

Ethernet cable comes out of the wall, plugs into an eight slot switch. I have five cables to these five individual docking/charging stations and one to my PC obviously.

Today director came in to replace the five stations to one big station. From five cables to one. Fine by me. Unplug the cables from the switch, connect the new docking station with the one wire, and away I go.

Or not.

New docking station not connecting. Follow it to the switch. Switch is picking up the connection from the docking station, but not the wall. Odd. I plug my PC directly into the wall. Nothing.

So the outlet is dead. How in the hell could that have happened? There's no power, only data so there's not like anything shorted. I didn't knock or bump the outlet. I never even went near the outlet when doing this. The moment I connected the large docking station with the Ethernet cable, the wall outlet called it quits. I just look like the biggest moron because this was supposed to be a brainless thing to do. Instead we have the IT guy coming in on Thursday.

Any ideas? Thanks.
 
I love a good cabling mystery. Option one is someone is f***ing with you :D

First off, are you sure things were working this morning before the change? Mice or whatever could have eaten the cable in the wall overnight?

When the five old stations were removed and the new one was put in, the cable connecting the switch to the wall didn't get changed right? Although it may have been jostled during when the cables for the five stations were removed and the new one was added, or four cables were removed)

When you tested your PC directly into the wall, what cable did you use? Was it the one that was connecting the switch to the wall, previously?

My guess is that the switch to wall cable had a marginal crimp, or a almost broken wire somewhere, and took this time to come apart. If you're running like super old equipment without auto negotiation, you might have bumped the uplink button on the switch/hub during the wiring -- but that seems unlikely. Wall outlet could have called it quits right now, but seems unlikely without stress on the outlet -- unless you like really yanked on the cable to the wall while mucking with the cabling at the switch.
 
Everything was working fine. I even post here no issues. Fairly new $8M dollar renovation, so would be doubtful.

No cabling or switch was altered in over a year.

I've tried three Ethernet cables to the wall. None worked. Used one of the three cables to connect to a switch across the room, and I was up and running.

Docking station is about 5' from the wall outlet. Didn't go near it. It, and I hate using this word, legit stopped working the moment I pulled the Ethernet cable from one device to another.
 
So you have this now?


X --> cable inside wall -> outlet -> cable -> switch -> stuff

What is X? Does it have any port security measures to prevent unauthorized equipment from connecting to the network?
 
X goes to this room with two locks on it in the basement. Inside there are six or seven electrical panels also with locks on them. Then there is what looks like 800 Cat5(?) cables plugged into whateverthefuck that thing is. Its a panel about 6' wide and what looks like 10' ceilings. I'm no joking when I say there has to be 800+ blue wires plugged in.

edit: This is a gov't building with a gov't budget.
 
Does it have any port security measures to prevent unauthorized equipment from connecting to the network?

Oh yeah, port security might do it. Unknown MAC address = shut down the port until IT can re-enable it.
 
mmk. IT called back. I mentioned the port security thing and he laughed. We're not equipped with that.

Like I told him, I get like 40% of this stuff. Any time something like this comes up, I get something out of it.

But he said it definitely has to be a hardware issue.
 
Could the port on the switches not be setup to allow for a client to connect, but only a switch? So switch to switch works, but switch to PC doesn't work.

Some older equipment required a crossover cable to connect a switch to the port, or you could change the port to connect a switch, but without the crossover cable. Again older version of switches.

Just a thought.
 
It's possible you had some sort of detritus buildup in the port or on the switch it was going to.
This could result in a port that is totally non-functional, or a "screamer". Screaming ports aren't terribly bad nowadays, since we're not using dumb hubs/repeaters.
It could be that the cable or the install of the cable was bad, but not bad enough to gig the job on the post-install testing. And use and multiple re-pluggings worked something loose.
It could be corrosion in the ports on either end.
It's possible that port on whatever the distribution switch is, just "died". Shit happens.
 
One possibility is static on the big station zapped the port on the main switch in the hub closet. Things are supposed to have protection but maybe that port got the dead static catcher.

If you are still testing things, use the working port to verify that all your cables are good. As others have suggested, cables do go bad even when you don't think you did anything to break them.
 
They have someone coming in this morning to look at it. I'll report back with results. Right now I have a cable running across the office to another switch. My desk area looks like a dorm room.
 
Did you try reversing the network cable? :ROFLMAO:

My equipment previously shipped with...less than stellar cables and they would work one day, but not the next, be very intermittent and fussy.

Very annoying when your troubleshooting in an education environment with limited privileges and a teacher that doesn't know much about computers.

Cannot wait to hear on the root cause, but I'm guessing static or bad cable.
Should start a pool! Or poll, I meant poll. Totally. :greedy:
 
Bad port on the switch or part security enabled on that swtichport?
 
Bad port on the switch or part security enabled on that swtichport?
Bad port on the switch. Apparently we don't have port security? Unless we do and he's pulling a fast one? No idea.
 
Back
Top