After arriving home after the Tequila Suicide incident, i found that my new DSL was offline. I wasn’t happy and in my state, i cursed Comindico and proceeded to try everything to fix it. I couldn’t work it out, and midway through trying to enable my second network card, a blurry, bubble throught appeared above my head. It was Elroy in all his angelicness.
“What i don’t understand, is the step of logic most people take when they discover something on their PC isn’t working. . . Even if they didn’t change anything, they’ll mess around with every setting and change the entire setup in an attempt to get it going again”.
It was deep. I didn’t modify anything, so what was my drunken fumbling going to do? I halted all proceedings and went to bed.
In the morning, it was back online, all was working a treat. I didn’t question it any further.
Tonight i arrive home tonight to find that my DSL was again offline. It was off and i couldn’t log into my router, just like last night. Something wasn’t right. The same situation, at the same time, two nights in a row? Coincidence or something more…?
A flashback memory of me returning the car keys to their hook – the house was quiet. Too quiet. Something was missing. And there it was! The upstairs PC was off also. The same as last night. The same as any other time my net connection never worked.
It all became clear.
My stupid hub (donated by Bandit a few years ago) had somehow managed to make itself into a series-like connection. If one part of the chain was dead, the rest went dead also. So, when the PC upstairs was off, it effectivley killed the network connection to all other devices on my network, DSL modem included (when it really should have no effect on anything else).
Rushing upstairs i turned the PC on and behold! All network connectivity came back.
3 Years of stupid network problems i could never work out and it turns out it’s the stupid hub. A 10baseT hub, at that.
Come monday, i’ll order a new one.
