Saturday (02/20): I woke to the smell of pancakes this morning. Olivia had picked up more pancake mix yesterday and, I think, wanted to have another special delight for me before Serge and she leave for South Africa early Monday. We’re almost out of the VT maple syrup I brought. I feel guilty because I’ve been the beneficiary (biggest consumer) so far. Serge’s mom had never had maple syrup before. Serge still prefers chocolate syrup on his, even when Olivia puts chocolate bits into the pancake batter.
Today was to be a straight-forward swap of new network switches for older, smaller, slower, sometimes broken ones. Working with technology might aways be interesting, but it’s rarely easy. I guess that’s why so many people run away when you say “can someone help me with my computer?”
Definition: a network switch is a box into which you plug in a number of computers (anywhere from 4 to 48 depending on what you buy) and which controls the data passing between all the connected stuff and hopefully provide access to servers and the internet.
At the start nothing went right and only got okay at the end. First, the cabinets that Omonge had placed in each of the building’s six wings were too small (not deep enough) to hold the new switches. He seems to not have considered the size of the switches plus the space needed for the cabling behind and the patch cords cables in front. We finally decided to swap the old switch out and just let the new one sit on the bottom and stick out. We also installed a battery backup to protect the equipment and keep it running when power goes out (which it will). We did this in two of the six office areas.
We also tried to install a network switch for the server room in a rack. The switch was made by Cisco, the Kleenex of the networking world so we couldn't believe how cheap and flimsy the mounting bracket was. We finally just ended up setting it on top of the rack where it would be stable so we could keep moving forward.
In testing our installations, we discovered that nothing in either wing we'd worked onwas able to connect to the servers, to the internet, or to the other parts of the building. Oh boy! We tried all sorts of tests and seeing nothing obvious.
After about 4 hours, we were just about begin putting all the old gear back in place so that everything would work (be back to normal) on Monday. Just as we began, I suggested that we simply put back the one old switch in the server room and leave the new ones in the two wings. Voila! The problem went away!
We finally stumbled across a portion of the new switch configuration and discovered that we needed to tell it what type of equipment each connection (port) was to expect. The switches were trying to "talk" to other switches as if they were computers. As soon as we corrected this, everything worked perfectly.
We’d run out of time to work on any more office wings but thought it wise to see how the workers in the two wings we’d done got along and now feel we do one wing a day to finish off the last four.
Anyway, we cleaned up the server room, neatened the wires, and have a much nicer looking room as a result.
And then the internet went down. Hey! It’s not our fault!
Which is why this is being posted a little late. (It’s 12:30 am here.)
Today was to be a straight-forward swap of new network switches for older, smaller, slower, sometimes broken ones. Working with technology might aways be interesting, but it’s rarely easy. I guess that’s why so many people run away when you say “can someone help me with my computer?”
Definition: a network switch is a box into which you plug in a number of computers (anywhere from 4 to 48 depending on what you buy) and which controls the data passing between all the connected stuff and hopefully provide access to servers and the internet.
We also tried to install a network switch for the server room in a rack. The switch was made by Cisco, the Kleenex of the networking world so we couldn't believe how cheap and flimsy the mounting bracket was. We finally just ended up setting it on top of the rack where it would be stable so we could keep moving forward.
In testing our installations, we discovered that nothing in either wing we'd worked onwas able to connect to the servers, to the internet, or to the other parts of the building. Oh boy! We tried all sorts of tests and seeing nothing obvious.
After about 4 hours, we were just about begin putting all the old gear back in place so that everything would work (be back to normal) on Monday. Just as we began, I suggested that we simply put back the one old switch in the server room and leave the new ones in the two wings. Voila! The problem went away!
We finally stumbled across a portion of the new switch configuration and discovered that we needed to tell it what type of equipment each connection (port) was to expect. The switches were trying to "talk" to other switches as if they were computers. As soon as we corrected this, everything worked perfectly.We’d run out of time to work on any more office wings but thought it wise to see how the workers in the two wings we’d done got along and now feel we do one wing a day to finish off the last four.
And then the internet went down. Hey! It’s not our fault!
Which is why this is being posted a little late. (It’s 12:30 am here.)
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