Getting into Gear

By Jerry Pournelle

November 29, 2004

(Getting into Gear :  Page 1 of 1 )

Some Lessons in Troubleshooting

Chaos Manor is now pretty thoroughly converted to gigabit Ethernet switches. The general product line we have used is D-LINK. As I have noted before, D-LINK equipment Just Works, and their documentation is sufficient and in good English—not that gigabit Ethernet switches need documentation.

You may recall from last month that we first went to gigabit when Fry's had a blowout sale on AirLink gigabit switches, and we bought several of them. In particular we bought one of their 5-port 1000-base-T switches, which went up at "Ethernet Central." There was even a picture last month.

Alas, although the AirLink 5-port was plugged into a power strip that supposedly has surge protection, it wasn't connected to an UPS. This turned out to be a Big Mistake, for several reasons. First, of course, if there's a power failure while you are using your Ethernet connection, either for connection to the Internet or for file transfers, you won't be able to finish those jobs and shut down gracefully.

Secondly, an UPS—at least the Falcon on-line UPS systems I use—offers far more surge protection than any power strip.

About a week after I installed the AirLink 5-port gigabit switch, it rained in Los Angeles. Rain here is usually either nothing or a big deal, and this time it was a big deal, with storms and lightning and thunder. It got bad enough that Roberta shut everything down in her office, but I was working on something and couldn't be bothered. Sure enough, a few minutes later we had a short power failure. My computers kept working due to the Falcon UPS systems , but of course I lost Internet communications. I began shutting systems down. There are enough of them that this took some time, and before I was done the power came back on.

I went back to work, but found I still didn't have communications.

My first move was to go reset the Cable Modem by powering it off, then back on.

 Page 1 of 1