Office Network - very confused

[Nemmeh]

Ok guys, let me give you a basic spill on what i'm dealing with here.

I'm in the process of trying to upgrade a office network. It consists of 4 PCs, two newer dells and two older celeron aopen's. Right now the office is wired with CAT5 homemade cabling, they are running a linksys dsl router which then shares the connection through 2 hubs.

The first hub is a 10mbit 8port, has uplink port then 8 additional ports. 4 of those outgoing ports are used which route access to the rest of the building. In the back office, one of the original cables from the 1st hub connects into yet another 10mbit aopen 4 port hub. This then has 1 outgoing cat5 which is attached to a dell optiplex a few feet away.

Ok, now the network speeds in the office are horrible. I mean absolutely horrible. A basic 200-300kb file takes a few minutes to send through the network. Also dsl speeds are limited to about 60kb/sec on the network.

Anyway, I figured I'd start off by upgrading the 1st 10mbit 8port hub. So I purchased a DLINK D-Link DSS-5+ 5port 10/100 switch. I took the uplink and the 4 other cat5 cables and hooked it all up. Now, I have no network connectivity at all. However, the status lights on the switch show it 4 ports to be at 100mbit and 1 to be at 10mbit. Even though the status lights say this, the computers don't see each other and I have no network connectivity at all.

So what gives? Keep in mind I didn't originally wire this network up. When upgrading from an older setup like this, is there something I'm not getting? Does a switch work the same way as a hub, crossing over the cabling so the computers can communicate? I'm just baffled by the setup in this office.

Help me please.

Thanks.

 

[ScottMac]

Your cabling is probably screwed up (i.e., not at spec).

It DOES make a difference.

Good Luck

Scott

 

[Nemmeh]

yeh, that's what i'm thinking... just from me looking at how the cabling has been done in the office just makes me believe that is where the problem lies.

Any other thoughts besides this? Just wanna make sure I cover all bases before I go rewiring an entire office.

 

[Goosemaster]

Plugging into a regular port, ie not an uplink port, will require a crossover cable.

That's your problem.

 

[Nemmeh]

yeh, that is what i was thinking but supposedly the switch i got is auto-sensing and automatically takes care of that.

I also posted in general hardware if you wish to take a look at a little more detailed explanation of the set up here at the office.

 

[kt]

Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Plugging into a regular port, ie not an uplink port, will require a crossover cable.

That's your problem.

I have the 8 port version of the switch he's using. It has cable auto-sensing technology. The port on the switch will detect the cable is cross-over or straight-thru and configure the port accordingly.

 

[gunrunnerjohn]

FWIW, I'd purchase a 100 foot ready-made CAT-5e or CAT-6 cable and use it to test various links, you'll quickly find out if it's cabling. As a rule, the issue with cables is normally a poor job of putting the connectors on, or of mixing up the twisted pairs.

 

[Goosemaster]

Originally posted by: kt

Originally posted by: Goosemaster
Plugging into a regular port, ie not an uplink port, will require a crossover cable.

That's your problem.

I have the 8 port version of the switch he's using. It has cable auto-sensing technology. The port on the switch will detect the cable is cross-over or straight-thru and configure the port accordingly.

interesting...