Re: [K12OSN] Our sad school network... Ethereal help

[Chris Hobbs <chobbs silvervalley k12 ca us>]

Jim Christiansen wrote:

> So sorry for the rant but I thought some history was needed.  I think 
> the only way to get this solved is for ME to provide the evidence of a 
> poorly wired network.  I have never used Etherreal before and if someone 
> on this list could provide me with some simple no-brainer etherreal 
> command to dump the results of a network sweep indicating packets going 
> to oblivion and back again then I could email the results to our 
> superintendent, every technician and my principal.

Ouch Jim - that sounds really bad. Did you have a contractor wire the 
place or your in-house guys? I know when I wrote the spec for our major 
wiring projects a few years ago, I required certification of every drop 
as part of the final deliverables. You might check to see if that was 
part of your original contract, and see if you can find some recourse 
with the vendor to come out and fix their mistakes.

Anyway, to assist with your actual problem, there are relatively 
inexpensive (< $100) testers that can at least confirm that the wiring 
is correct from a pin-to-pin standpoint. They won't do the detailed 
technical analysis of a Fluke or a PentaScanner, but if you really have 
crossed pairs, it will reveal those. One tester, two guys with 
walkie-talkies, and a notepad will get you all the eveidence you need of 
an unacceptable installation.

I'm flipping through my Specialized Tools (http://www.specialized.net) 
catalog, and they have 4-pair testers for as little as $44.75.

Regrettably, I don't think Ethereal is going to be too helpful. We've 
had the occasional problem with someone looping a minihub back into our 
LAN (hooking up two ports on the minihub to two ports on the classroom 
wall), and it kills the network, but doesn't show up at all on packet 
sniffers. It was incredibly frustrating the first time we came across it 
- now we recognize it pretty quickly and just do a class to class search 
for the offending device.

Hope this helps - good luck!

--
Chris Hobbs       Silver Valley Unified School District
Head geek:              Technology Services Coordinator
webmaster:   http://www.silvervalley.k12.ca.us/~chobbs/
postmaster:               chobbs silvervalley k12 ca us
pgp:  http://www.silvervalley.k12.ca.us/~chobbs/key.asc