Network Problems

[Mugleston, Brad]

HELP!!!

We had a thunder storm roll through last Friday evening.  My son and I got everything unplugged, we thought, but now my home network (wired) doesn't want to work  at least not all of it.

The layout.  From the Cable modem I go to a LinkSys firewall switch that feeds the computers on the upper floor of the house.  A line runs down two floors to the basement to a wireless switch that feeds (wired) the X box and machines on the main floor and in the basement.  The Wireless feeds my notebook and my son's note books when they are in town.

I haven't checked out everything but here is what I've found.  

1 - the whole upper floor doesn't work.  My youngest son and I tested the wires and those seem to be OK.  By doesn't work I can't even ping the first switch (LinkSys)
2 - the wireless works I can ping the two switches and get on the internet.
3 - the X box works but I haven't tried any of the other machines/outlets on the lower floors.

Set up and Interesting things:

1 - my computer (Red Hat 9) has a fixed IP - 192.168.1.50 as it is also a mail server for the other computers in the house and I found that worked better than DHCP
2 - my youngest son's computer is running XP and it is setup for DHCP (from the LinkSys) but gets a 168.X.X.X address (I think it's 168 I forgot to write it down) anyway per the LinkSys setup it should be in the 192.168.1.1XX range.  

Neither computer (using IPCONFIG or IFCONFIG) shows any received bites and only a small number of sent bytes (the XP shows more than the Linux box).  The XP computer does tell you that it's lost it's connection if you unplug the wire.  Neither show an assigned gateway or DNS.

My computer (RedHat) has two network cards - one is not connected to anything anymore other than being installed.  I changed my network wires to that and then activated ETH1 and shut down ETH0.  Same results, even after a reboot - doesn't work.

Lights on the LinkSys switch - none other than the modem and line to the other switch - doesn't matter what is plugged in where.
Lights on the wireless - every port seems to be working OK

I'm suspecting the LinkSys got fried but only on the normal ports - would that make sense?

Questions

How does one go about testing the hardware?  The switch box and the NIC's?  I'd rather not go out and start buying things if they can be tested first.

Any suggestions, ideas, thoughts, random acts of kindness -- Anything?


One last thing - PLEASE reply directly to me (include the list if you want) because I don't always get emails from this list as our firewall here at works blocks it.

Thanks

Brad