I'm sure you've all had this happen:
You're on a setup. You plug the customers network cord into the surge suppressor. You connect a 5 footer from the surge suppressor to the MFP. You power up, and wait for DHCP to find the machine and assign an address. And nothing happens. And more nothing happens ...
... then you connect the customers cable directly into the MFP. Then DHCP does it's magic. An open address is selected, DNS1 and maybe even a DNS2 are visible. Sometimes even a domain name. You set a static address and this part is done, unless ...
... unless the customer is concerned that some of his machines connect through the surge suppressor, and some don't. Why!? I have a couple of theories, and I'd like your opinions:
1) Perhaps the surge suppressor is actually open across the network connection. Maybe there was some kind of a surge, but I kind of doubt it in the 2 seconds it was connected since I took it out of the box. I suppose it should test through with my cable tester ... any reason it shouldn't? I can also put my laptop on the network side, and the MFP on the other side of the surge suppressor, set up static addresses, and see if it will connect.
2) Maybe there are more than the allowable 6 meters of cable hub to patch panel, 90 meters from patch to wall plug, and 3 meters from wall plug to MFP. Exactly what happens when the wire is too long? Do the electrons just get tired and lay there in the wire, because they just don't have any more jiggle left? Maybe packets lost? Maybe low signal levels? How can I tell? I've got Wireshark, but when I start the thing running I can't make anything of the gibberish that it pours out. And if I'm not getting a network connection it's not going to do me any good anyhow. Is there a more suitable software/tool?
3) Maybe I've got a bad router port? Again, how can I tell?
=^..^=
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