Question What switch will help me debug?

[shelkol]

I have a bunch of stuff on wired ethernet, wireless from the modem and a mesh (Deco). It works fine, until it doesn't. Then I wind up going back and forth between the switch and the mesh. When it fails, it usually hangs all of the wired Ethernet. It is very frustrating to determine which port of the main switch is causing or passing along the issue. The switch I currently have is a Netgear FS116. What should I buy that could give me an indication of which port is messed up?

Thanks

 

[kanewolf]

I have a bunch of stuff on wired ethernet, wireless from the modem and a mesh (Deco). It works fine, until it doesn't. Then I wind up going back and forth between the switch and the mesh. When it fails, it usually hangs all of the wired Ethernet. It is very frustrating to determine which port of the main switch is causing or passing along the issue. The switch I currently have is a Netgear FS116. What should I buy that could give me an indication of which port is messed up?

Thanks

Can you do a hand drawing of all the network gear and the type of connectivity it has.
Take a picture and post it to imgur or another image hosting site. Post the link to your picture.
It is difficult to be sure we understand your configuration without a picture.

 

[bill001g]

That switch is rather old...well it could be just outdated. It only has 10/100 ports which is more than enough for many application but most things now can run gigabit.

Unfortunately even if you had a gigabit version of that switch it likely wouldn't help much.

Unmanaged switches pretty much just have lights and they don't tell you a lot. Most have lights that flash when there is traffic. Problem is you can't really tell how much traffic it is unless it is excessive or none at all.

There are some low end managed switches that have the ability to let you capture traffic on ports. This require a pc running something like wireshark to analyze the data. It can be like trying to drink from a fire hose until you learn to run the tool, it is not some magic tool that will show anything other than very obvious issues until you learn to use it.

So if we assume that your switch is not defective the key thing that would cause 1 wired port to affect another wired port is a loop. In the simple case you take a cable and plug it between 2 ports on the switch. After a small period of time broadcast packets will build up use all the bandwidth of the switch. Many switches now protect against the more simple type of loops but there are still many you can kill your network with a simple cable. In most cases it is more complex like where you multiple switches or device. You could for example hook up a dual nic pc to the same switch and then use a option the pc to bridge the ports and it would cause the same issue.

 

[shelkol]

At this point I don't thin it isn't worthy of a picture. The modem has 3 used ports:
1. FS116 ethernet switch
2. Honeywell Redlink Interface
3. Deco Mesh

On the switch:
1. Kohler Generator
2. another switch

The other switch:
1. TIVO
2. Davis Instruments Weather station

On the mesh (WiFi):
3 laptops ( 2 windows, 1 Linux)
2 phones
1 tablet
4 garage door monitors
1 Sense power monitor
3 KASA power switches
1 Hot water Heater
1 camera
1 device which I assume is a streaming


I usually have much more connected but have been trying to eliminate the culprit. In this configuration sometimes it will work for hours and other times the DECO mesh will turn red in 5 minutes. I've spent hours trying to determine which port on the switch is causing the issue. If I unplug the switch, the Mesh works great.

I understand that things fail, but I get very frustrated when the mode is everything stops with no indication of why. I would buy a new switch, but want something that may indicate just how busy a port is instead of all port LEDs being active

 

[bill001g]

Maybe just plug the 16 port switch in with nothing at all plugged into the switch. If it fails in that simple a config the switch itself would be defective.

It depends on how many ports you actually need. You can get 5 port 10/100/1000 switches for $15.

There are no switches that I know of that you can see the utilization with out software on say a pc. You can get switches for fairly inexpensive that are below commercial grade switches that allow you to pull data from the switch. This though requires you learn about SNMP to really get what you want. It is a lot of effort when your primary goal is not to long term monitor utilization.

It generally a single device using up all the bandwidth is not going to lock up the other device. They tend to just run slow while everyone fights over the bandwidth. If your internet is over 100mbps then it doesn't matter because all the devices combined on your 16 port switch can only use 100mbps. The other devices are on a different port on your modem/router. The other devices should also be able to communicate to each other even if your internet is 100% used.

The other possibility would be something strange like a device talking the router/gateway ip. This would make it appear as if you network was down. Use the ARP -a command and check the mac address of the gateway when it is working and then again when it breaks. If this changes then something is not correct.

If it actually is hanging the network it almost has to be a broadcast storm and these are almost always caused by some kind of loop. You description of how it is connected though is pretty simple so it more likely is some defective equipment.

 

[shelkol]

Thanks. I thought I found the problem as the Max TV stream box was connected to both wired and WiFi. I shut down the WiFi and disconnected the ethernet. Will unplug the last switch port and see what happens.

 

[bill001g]

Most devices are smart enough to not use both, they tend to use ethernet if they have a choice.
It is also very unlikely they would be bridged which is what makes loops. Generally they even get different IP because the mac address will be different.

 

[Ralston18]

Question:

"1 device which I assume is a streaming" ??? Sentence seems to be cut off.

In any case what is that device? What is it doing? Is it even yours?

Key thought being to leave nothing in doubt.

 

[shelkol]

It is a Max TV Freestream box. I did find the culprit, it seems my Deco mesh failed. Spent hours on the support line and they are going to swap it out. I did upgrade my switch to a smart Gigabit 16 port. Thanks for your help