On Fri, Nov 28, 2003 at 11:00:18PM +0000, Christopher Dawkins wrote:
The entire Base-T Cat-5 RJ45 system is powerful, flexible and convenient.
But how could they possibly have designed it so that it can be brought down so easily by any tidy end-user?
You should be using spanning tree protocol (sometimes called spamming tree protocol when it breaks) which should allow these kind of redundant links that you are creating. Indeed redundant links should be/are a good thing. It sounds as though your new switches support spanning tree but you havn't enabled it or something, although I have known switch makers to release broken spanning tree firmware which needs updates (although seeing a Cisco Catalyst 5500 transferring over 4 gigabits per second of duplicated traffic can be fun)
============= OK, OK =======================================
I know we can sort it out in various ways. I am told that configuring DEVICE_POLLING in the kernels will protect our routers and servers by polling the network cards instead of allowing them to interrupt. But my immediate reaction is to source simpler switches, those without auto-MDX/MDIX. Unfortunately, these are becoming rare beasts now.
Like I said up there, use spanning tree protocol and keep a cable database of what is plugged where, so you don't plug things into the wrong place.
Most switches I have used have at least a telnet interface to allow configuration of all of the settings so this should not be a problem with your computers/software.
Adam