PCFormat Forum Archive

Good Morning all.

This is just a question to which i think i know the answer to problem is i woul like some feedback to it. I got in to work this morning to find out that two hubs in two diffrent areas have bad ports and i was wondering what could cause these bad ports? could power tripping cause them? Every three months our hubs seem to develop bad ports and i dont really know why except maybe for power failures. any ideas?

What make and model hubs are you using. I've learned from experience that cheaper switches tend to have a shorter lifespan.

Dirty power can always cause electronic failure. That's why, in certain areas, you really need to invest in power cleaning strips. Sort of a multiplug, but it does regulating and smoothing and the like

Surges in the electrical circuits can cause earth loops to occur between equipment. In other words a surge on one piece of equipment can cause fault current to flow through the path of least resistance which could be your port.

This generally occurs when
1.) On long cable runs.
2.) Poorly earthed equipment.

We often have routers dieing because we earth our radio equipment very well but our IT guys.......

Can you shed some more light on you particular problem. Is it the same ports failing each time?
Do the hubs both work on the same electrical circuit?
I assume that there is PC's connected to these ports, no other type of equipment?
Is your equipment earthed to a good earth mat. (Not just the earth in the plug. Are you using surge protection? Something better than the average surge protection plug you buy from your PC shop?

well im new to my pplace of work so im not sure how the electrical side is all set up what i do know is that we have a direct feed of electrical power as in those funny red plugs with the shaved earth we use that. all the hubs are 3coms so no doubts there regarding cheap junk. the ports that die are completly random as in no sequence sometimes no 1 will die on that hub replace and say no 15 will go on that one. the two most common hubs with bad ports do run on the same circuit. im not sure if we have surge protection i dont think so though.

The main reason for those two hubs in diffrent areas having bad ports is that my work was in in the middle of two hectic thunder storms and lightning hit 3 diffrent places and we have 3 dead hubs intresting? and one hub with 5 bad ports and a dead media converter. so the reason for me not being online for yesterday and most of today is for sorting out these problems. I hate thunder and lightning.

Do your external data lines (phone, ADSL, whatever) have lightning protection on them? If they don't, you can have the cleanest, most surge protected power supply in the world, and it won't help one bit.

they should do. i mean telkom installed the diginet lines and im sure they would have installe the relevant protection, but we all know telkom. from what i have been told our telkom lines dont get affected just the network. what type of protection could i put on those hubs to stop power surges from generating bad ports? am looking for something cheap yet effective so that my boss takes the bait hehe.

You get plug-thru surge protectors for phone lines (modems specifically) where you plug the phone line into the one side, and plug it into your modem, but I dunno if you get a similar thing for ethernet jacks. I'll have a look, and if I find anything I'll let you know

http://www.bb-elec.com/product.asp?SKU=IASP1P - 8-port version
http://www.phoenixcon.com/info/details.asp?id=254 - single port

Both only seem to support 10/100, not gigabit

I'll edit this post as I find more interesting ones

thankx Synkronos will show my boss when i next see him. keep them coming.

http://dataweek.co.za/news.asp?pklNewsI ... egoryID=47
One more link, this one which is from a za site, and lists a South African company contact at the bottom. Maybe you can give them a call and they can help you out, or direct you to a Durban company.