How to troubleshoot an ethernet drop<article>
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Lex Friedman used to edit and write at Macworld—
a lot, lot, lot of articles—and now works at a leading podcast, ad-sales, and content network. He called me after moving into a new house recently as he thought he had lost his marbles somewhere in the wiring of his house.</p><p>
Lex’s problem was that the house was pre-wired for ethernet, which is generally a good thing. He got a new broadband modem from his ISP and purchased a new ethernet switch, but when he went to plug in his AirPort Base Station (a pre-2012 model), it wouldn’t work in one place on the network, but would on another.</p><ul>
<li>When plugged via his new switch into the broadband modem in his basement, the base station worked fine, getting an Internet connection without a problem.</li>
<li>When connected via one of the house’s internal ethernet “drops”—the run in the walls from jack to jack—to the basement switch, the base station couldn’t obtain an IP address.</li>
<li>However, when he plugged the base station into the modem in the basement, and plugged in the switch in upstairs, the switch had Internet access over ethernet.</li>
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Something was afoot. ethernet cables can go bad, and because it’s relatively rare, most people don’t have to troubleshoot this regularly. It seemed like either one of the ethernet patch cables or one of the runs in the walls of the house was funky, but his testing didn’t show a consistent problem because the network worked in some configurations and not others.</p><p class="jumpTag"><a href="/article/3018526/networking/how-to-troubleshoot-a-dropped-ethernet-drop.html#jump">To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here[/url]</p></section></article>
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How to troubleshoot an ethernet drop
