[clue-talk] network issue

[dperkins at techangle.com]

>>Oops.  I guess I didn't finish that sentence.  You're right.  They say
>> the
>>switches are too expensive.  But to prevent the problem from happening
>>again, they confiscated all of our switches.  And since we talk to the
>>PLCs in our products via Ethernet, that poses a big problem for me, since
>>I can no longer test multiple systems.
>>
>>It's the typical management reaction.  Rather than fix the real problem,
>>they implement some inane policy.
>>
>>
> Ahh, there's always a "reasonable" solution somewhere hiding in there...
>
> Will they buy you ONE switch and let you move your testing environment
> completely off the company LAN?
>
> I'm not understanding how your multiple systems could have caused this
> problem, anyway... each system is an end-point, not a loop...?  Unless
> I'm missing something in the story.  You mentioned "plugging a cable
> into two ports on the same switch"... that should never be necessary at
> all... in a non-spanning-tree network you've created a Layer-2 loop...
> on a spanning-tree enabled network one of the ports would automatically
> shut down... so either way, it wouldn't work.
>
> Can you explain a bit more on what you're trying to accomplish?
>
> It sounds like it "worked" for a while and then stopped working.  What
> changed?
>
> If it's none of our business, that's okay too... of course.  ;-)
>
> Nate
> _______________________________________________

I was told that they found a cable plugged into two ports on the switch,
instead of one end of that cable being plugged into a PC or PLC.  Who
would have done that and why is another matter, and they claim it has
happened three times.

I need to have the PLC's plugged into our network because they are not
located at my desk.  There are also PC's associated with the PLCs and they
are on the network too.  After testing is done, we save the customer
configurations and files to our network.

Maybe I could get them to subnet this from our network.  That way we only
kill the subnet, and I would have control over the subnet.