> First check that you have link lights on all ports of your > switch. Since you have the server and the client > separately plugged into the switch you should only be > using straight-through cables. The only pins you need to > be worried about is 1, 2, 3 and 6. As long as they are > right then the rest don't matter.
They are all straight through cables. All ports seem to work when I plug the lappie straight into the switch. The patch cable is a cat6 cable. The home made one is cat5e - dunno if that makes a difference. > Check that you have a working straight-through patch cable > from kitchen to laptop. Also, the entire run from the PC > to the switch should be less than 100 meters. Also > consider that the connectors may not be properly crimped > (inspect the gold contacts on the RJ45 and the flush box > pins). The patch cable is about 2 or 3 metres. The run from the switch to the flushbox is just under 15m (originally 15m but I clipped bits off it when I was practicing my crimping skills). > It is possible that you could have untwisted the cables > too much, but you would be pretty unlucky if that was the > case, you can get away with a good 2cm. I think I may be at about 3-4cm - I'll redo it if you think it will help. There's plenty of slack for me to clip and re-do (with cable getting shorter each time :-( ) > On your PC do the DHCP request and monitor the server: > > tail -vf /var/log/messages > > Incoming and outgoing DHCP requests will appear there. I > am sure you already knew that though. On IPCop those messages appear on VT12 > Another thought, is this a smart switch? Perhaps ports > have been configured to be blocked or on a different > subnet (LAN). It's just a $67 8 port switch. I'm not sure how to configure it as it doesn't have an IP address that I can browse or telnet to. There's no mention of smart features on the spec sheet - not even a monitoring port. I believe it keeps a MAC address table to remember which port to send each packet to, but I turned it off and back on to clear the MAC table. Yuri
