greetings. this is common amung cheap switches. the wiring between port 1 and the uplink port is shared so that only one of them can operate at a time. never understood the logic behind this since it can't save much money but I have seen this lots of times including on my own 24 port linksys switch. hey, they probably saved 50 cents in the production process doing it that way. Brian. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gregory Nowak" <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 2:00 PM Subject: network switch question > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hi all. > > I have a 5 port switch here, plus the uplink port. I recently ran out > of available ports on the switch, and not wanting to buy another one, > I decided to take my firewall/server machine, and hook it up to the > uplink port using a cross-over cable. The other 5 machines are hooked > up to the regular ports with standard category 5 patch cables. Yes, I > know the uplink port is meant to connect 2 switches to one another, > but I figured that I could do what I've done, since the server does > dns for the lan, and provides the internet connection to the rest of > the lan. > > When 4 out of the 5 of the other machines are hooked up and running, > plus the server on the uplink port, everything is just fine. However, > if I plug in and power up the fifth machine, on the port right next to > the uplink port, no machines on the lan can communicate with the > server, and communication between the machines themselves is very slow > (we're talking 130 Ms averages for pings from machine to machine). If > the fifth machine is just plugged in but off, everything is fine. This > starts happening when the network interface on the fifth machine comes > up. I should mention that the fifth machine isn't the problem, since > this happens with the 4 other machines, provided that one of them is > hooked up to the port which is right next to the uplink port > (I.E. this happens with different cables, and interface cards). If I > unplug the server from the uplink port, and plug in and power up all > other 5 machines on the regular ports, communication from machine to > machine on the lan is just fine, until I plug the server back into the > uplink port. > > Considering what I've done by plugging my server into the uplink port > with a cross-over cable, is the behavior I'm seeing to be expected, or > is my switch messed up in some way? If this behavior is to be > expected, then I'm curious to know why it happens, so can someone > knowledgeable please explain what's going on? Thanks. > > Greg > > P.S. The server itself isn't the problem either, since if I plug it > into one of the regular ports with a regular patch cable, everything > works just fine. Also, the cross-over cable is good too, since I've > tried it directly from the nic of one of the machines to the server's > nic, and the 2 boxes communicated just fine. > > - -- > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager at EU.org > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux) > > iD8DBQFBJjw17s9z/XlyUyARAn0AAJ4us/Ts+Vefd9QzlVIYM7lWk5CneQCfScWl > xP9JDAjekMOdaE0vAd3Njuo= > =SO9e > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup > >
