Dead Switch

[Ghel]

We came back from the Christmas break to find that half the computers in the bank couldn't get on the network. Joy.

At first, we thought it was the T1 to our main office, but after resetting that connection, I noticed that the connection lights on one of the switches were all orange. I cycled the power to it, although I didn't expect that to help, and still nothing.

Luckily, there were a few open ports on the other switch, so I moved those network cables that we absolutely needed to the other switch. But only half of us are here this week, and come Monday, we're going to need another switch. I emailed our IT guy at the main branch and explained the situation. He ordered us another switch, which should be here Friday.

We didn't figure out until this morning that our VOIP connection to the main office was down. At first, we thought it was the T1 again, even though everything else was working. Then I realized that the phone system must be plugged into the dead switch. I tracked down which network cable it was, and sure enough. I found something that could be temporarily unplugged from the working switch and plugged the phone system in there.

What a fun bit of troubleshooting. They don't pay me enough for this.

ETA: My husband just said he should have bought me a pocket protector for Christmas.

[TheSHAD0W]

In an emergency, you should be able to run to Best Buy and purchase a consumer-grade switch. I believe they have some 8-port switches available. (CompUSA/Fry's might have them for less money, if you have one in your city, and they'll have larger switches also.) Frankly, considering how much they cost and how much your service depends on them, you ought to have one lying around for just such an emergency.

These switches may have a specific uplink port, or they may have auto-switching ports. Plug the uplink port (or one auto-switched port) into a port in your working switch, plug whatever you unplugged to make that space into another port in the small switch, and you now have 6 more slots to plug something into.

[Ghel]

The nearest Best Buy is over an hour's drive away. The nearest CompUSA/Frys is even farther.

[wolfie]

All the more reason for the bank to have an on-site spare for a relatively inexpensive mission-critical item.

[Geek King]

In an emergency, you should be able to run to Best Buy and purchase a consumer-grade switch.

No way a consumer-grade switch should work on (what should be) a high-security network like a bank's out of the box. There could even be all kinds of safeguards on the equipment to keep unknown hardware from being plugged into the network. At my workplace we have to set up any new switches with a laptop first so the network will accept the new hardware when we plug it in, else the in-place hardware will actually turn off the ethernet/fiber port where the new hardware is connected.