[geeks] Network Nightmare (solve, I hope)

[md.benson at gmail.com]

Hi,

Thanks for all the help and suggestions regarding this issue. I *think* after
a lot of greif this morning with instability coming to a head and our Firewall
causing (unrelated) issues, I tracked it down to a pair of old wall sockets in
the comms room that were a carry-over from the old LAN wiring. Equipment had
been plugged into them both (in one case by me, mea culpa) in recent months as
webd rearranged stuff on returning after That There Pandemic(tm) lockdown. I
should have realised as Ibd already disconnected them once.

Anyway I rerouted the equipment cables to the main switch (opposite side of
the rather small room) and disconnected said socket drops completely. Then I
opened the faceplate (which had been accessed without my permission to fit an
analogue phone line at some stage, by the looks of it) and cut the goddamn
sockets off. Hopefully thatbs the end of THAT sorry tale. I can only assume
the cable is damaged or has something noisy next to it since we had building
work done a couple of years ago.

I am going to put in a request to my boss for a managed switch to put in the
centre of the LAN to hopefully allow me better control over the network.

One thing Ibd appreciate input on:

We run 2 different subnets on the LAN right now (192.168.10x for PCs, printers
etc and 10.0.44.x for our IP Phones) is it worth considering VLANing these
using a Managed Switch to split the traffic up? If I did that would I be able
to prioritise the IP Phone traffic on the LAN over other traffic to prevent IP
Phone quality losses?

Thanks,

Sent from my iPhone

> On 20 Jul 2020, at 21:47, Patrick Giagnocavo <patrick at zill.net> wrote:
>
> o;?What I have seen in the past, is a network device that negotiates at
half-duplex , then later negotiates at full-duplex, then negotiates at
half-duplex etc.
>
> Solution is to set both sides of the Ethernet connection that is affected to
full-duplex.
>
> Cheers Patrick
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: md benson <md.benson at gmail.com>
> To: Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
> Sent: Mon, 20 Jul 2020 06:33:38 -0400 (EDT)
> Subject: [geeks] Network Nightmare
>
> Hi,
>
> We are having a major issue at $work with or LAN just completely flaking
out
> or slowing up to a crawl. It usually happens in the morning when people
start
> coming into work and booting up PCs (which means Ibm not usually on site to
> analyse it). Usually disconnecting one of the Area switches from the
Central
> switch will calm it down, but it can reoccur several times.
>
> We have one central (unmanaged) switch that has the 2 main area switches
(also
> unmanaged) spurred off it as well as a WiFi AP and a switch on a Fibre line
> (via copper to fibre media converters). The main switch then connects to a
> Firebox T35 via a single line to the main switch.
>
> The T35, as well as vetting our LAN traffic, routes off-site traffic to 3
WANs
> depending if itbs for a specific Cloud service (uses RDP Terminal services
> via a permanent VPN over a dedicated VDSL line), VoIP (uses itbs own VDSL
> line to prevent internet traffic compromising call quality) or general
> Internet (has a general use VDSL line of itbs own).
>
> We have 2 servers (in different places, one in a rack with a dedicated
> switch), about 20 client PCs, 2 WiFi APs (with minimal traffic as they are
> only accessible through equipment I allow). We will be introducing 18 VoIP
> phones also in the next week or so so as you can imagine LAN outages or
> blackouts are going to be a major headache.
>
> The infrastructure wiring is all Cat6a (STP) and is less than 3 years old.
>
> Herebs a link to a diagram:
>
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/j4qf3evxqy31xcb/network-2020.png?dl=0
>
> I understand the situation is very vague but I am at a loss to know how to
> begin diagnosis of this kind of issue. I canbt just pull up logs for
> something at link level with a setup like this, and I lack the expertise to
> know the go-to tools or methods in a situation like this.
>
> My only possible notion thus far is we might be overwhelming the Firewall
(we
> are near itbs recommended limits) but the situation seems more like
> something in the LAN is getting stuck in a loop or a bunfight or something.
>
> All help and suggestions gratefully received.
>
> b
>
> Mark
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