I solved a similar bizarre LAN problem by threading one of the CAT-5 cables
through a ferrite toroid core as many times as it would go. The symptoms
were similar to yours and not consistent -- any time any hardware changed
the symptoms would change. One of the machines on the network was putting
noise on the line and messing up one of the switches. Putting a long cable
(80') between that machine and the switch fixed it, but not wanting a mess
of cables tried the ferrite core on that cable and it worked too.
If you have more trouble, you might consider the ferrite core method.
Karl
--On Friday, June 29, 2001 2:34 PM -0500 brian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> In case anyone cares, and I appreciate Pierre Fortin and Scott Taylors
> suggestions in troubleshooting this, but I thought i would post what the
> problem actually was.
>
> Original problem was i couldn't ping all IP's of my work computers from
> home. I thought this possibly a mandrake issue since I didn't have a
> problem with any of my windows machines. But it wasn't.
>
> I inheritted a network to administer and have had to troubleshoot
> problems on top of problems. I found first a bad port on a hub. I
> replaced this with a switch. That got my main MDK box pingable. I tried
> MDK 7.2, 8.0, OpenBSD, two different kinds of NICs on 3 different
> machines. And nothing improved. Then I replaced two old managable
> switches with new switches. That got my entire network pingable remotely
> (strange that it always worked internally.) .
>
> The manageable switches had databases of MAC address that it could not
> clear and would not find new hardware attached to any ports. Thats why
> the existing Windows machines would work I suppose.
>
> Anyway, i learned alot and thought i would share. I could only test at
> home and as the problems were intermittent I got a lot of false
> positives. Maybe now I can get some sleep before the next problem
> arrises ;)
>
>
> -Brian
