The Phenomenon of LAN Outages

[Genic]

Anyone ever wonder why the network you maintain at work shuts down on its own accord and mysteriously comes back up? I swear, there's something going through the fiber optics in this place that lives and breaths. Also, working weekends here there are some problems that happen only on the weekend, very strange.

 

[Tallgeese]

Originally posted by: Genic
Anyone ever wonder why the network you maintain at work shuts down on its own accord and mysteriously comes back up?

Ummmmm...nope. Because the one I inherited doesn't do that anymore (although it used to fail OFTEN before I fixed it my first week on the job almost 5 years ago).

 

[OutHouse]

wrong thread but ill imput:

We have 3 offices, one in boulder, on in Indiana and the other in Georgia. For some reason from time to time ALL the computers in the Indiana office dissapear from network neighborhood, and come back eventually. We can still ping them, transfer files... so its not effecting the workers. We have checked EVERYTHING even brought in a consultant and still cant figure it out. I would like to figure this out before i go crazy.

 

[MacBaine]

My cat's breath smells like cat food.

 

[Genic]

Ummmmm...nope. Because the one I designed and maintain doesn't do that (although it used to fail quite a bit before I reworked it).

Yah, but how large is the network you maintain? This one is like 1200+ computer/server mixed windows/solaris/linux environment. You can imagine the engineering headache in making this place work.

 

[Tallgeese]

Originally posted by: Genic
how large is the network you maintain? This one is like 1200+ computer/server mixed windows/solaris/linux environment. You can imagine the engineering headache in making this place work.

Not as large...altho in my experience, many times the worst issues impeding system stability are political, rather than technical, in nature.

Even so...I've designed and maintained larger networks in the past, approaching the size of yours (just over 1000). The basic concepts for stability are the same, no matter how big or small the network involved.

 

[Tallgeese]

Originally posted by: Citrix
wrong thread but ill imput:

We have 3 offices, one in boulder, on in Indiana and the other in Georgia. For some reason from time to time ALL the computers in the Indiana office dissapear from network neighborhood, and come back eventually.

Assuming an MS network:
Are you using WINS?
Have you hard coded a Master Browser for that office?

 

[OutHouse]

yes, that was the first thing we checked.

 

[AmigaMan]

Originally posted by: MacBaine
My cat's breath smells like cat food.

my name is MacBaine and I'm an idiot and a troll.

 

[GeekDrew]

I'm a computer tech at a highschool in the area, and we experience those problems every now and then. It's fun picking up the paging intercom, pressing "Emergency Page - ALL", and then announcing that if you are having a problem with network connectivity, to shut down, restart, and your problems should be resolved. Then I would likely get at least a couple of calls from people with a college education wondering why they don't have network connectivity... :|

Of course, we just rebuilt the servers and re-deployed all clients, district wide... it's not been easy, but the ride has been smoother than I thought that it would be.

Andrew

 

[spidey07]

10,000 bucks it has to do with the calbing. Next comes the yahoos that built it.

Anybody give me 10/1 odds?

First - when you have these problems do you have basic network connectivity? As in can you ping your own internal name servers or other critical resources? If not then you've got BAD, BAD, BAD problems.

 

[Tallgeese]

Originally posted by: shrinertech
I'm a computer tech at a highschool in the area, and we experience those problems every now and then. It's fun picking up the paging intercom, pressing "Emergency Page - ALL", and then announcing that if you are having a problem with network connectivity, to shut down, restart, and your problems should be resolved. Then I would likely get at least a couple of calls from people with a college education wondering why they don't have network connectivity... :|

Of course, we just rebuilt the servers and re-deployed all clients, district wide... it's not been easy, but the ride has been smoother than I thought that it would be.

I troubleshot a similiar issue at a school once. Complete and total network failure, which happened at a roughly regular time every morning.

Turns out the network "design" (no design in place, basically) violating a physical layer rule for Ethernet...and the time of the error coincided with the first time machines were turned on in a computer lab that was in violation. WHAMMO! Network down thanks to collisions.

Brought the network back in spec...in this case, by re-routing one wire
Hummed along perfectly...until they pushed it out of spec in ANOTHER spot about 6 months later.

 

[Tallgeese]

Originally posted by: spidey07
10,000 bucks it has to do with the calbing. Next comes the yahoos that built it.

Anybody give me 10/1 odds?

First - when you have these problems do you have basic network connectivity? As in can you ping your own internal name servers or other critical resources? If not then you've got BAD, BAD, BAD problems.

Yep...I'm also wondering if it is actually the network which is failing, or if it is just certain key services that are failing.

 

[GeekDrew]

In my case, it's not the actual network that's failing... it's issues with the Novell NetWare servers (namely, DHCP issues). I know what's wrong, and the main admins are supposed to be correcting the issues.

Andrew

 

[Tallgeese]

Originally posted by: shrinertech
In my case, it's not the actual network that's failing... it's issues with the Novell NetWare servers (namely, DHCP issues). I know what's wrong, and the main admins are supposed to be correcting the issues.

What's taking them so long?

Issues that cause TOTAL failures normally should get TOP priority, IMHO.

 

[GeekDrew]

Sorry, I'd rather not say more in open forum. I'll share more via IM with you though, since we've chatted before.

ST