network switch question

[Alex Snow]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi greg,
The reason this doesn't work is because the uplink and the first 
normal port in the switch share some circuitry so if one is being used 
the other won't work.

hth.
On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 01:00:22PM -0500, Gregory 
Nowak wrote:
> -----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

- -- 
panic("Foooooooood fight!");
	-- In the kernel source aha1542.c, after detecting a bad segment list
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBJ0KW9XVrM3ri110RAqMaAJ4scPT8/uZv6LHmDBt39q74J02CzwCfb0dv
HWZMZDZU4a/MQjZXOjmjoL8=
=Z4wN
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----