Major networking issues no matter what settings I use.

[rldev]

I'm not sure what has happened to my network in the last two weeks, but I am at my wits end. My Win 7 Media Center system has become basically unusable. I have always had some glitches, but those were corrected with the addition of a solid state drive. Suddenly, everything has gone down hill. Whether I watch live tv or recordings from any of my xbox 360s, I get frequent lockups and network error messages. I have tried changing settings on my intel NIC, ran TCP Optimizer, disabled Network throttling, turned off Remote differential Compression, disabled Windows home networking, etc. Nothing improves my situation, and in many instances the changes make things worse.

I have a quad core cpu, 8GB of ram, win 7 64bit, Intel pci express NIC. All xbox 360s are connected to a gigabit network. How can I go about troubleshooting this and taking care of the problem once and for all.

[adam1991]

Try going back to a restore point prior to the onset of the problem.

[Venom51]

If the main HTPC runs fine and everything works there I'd work my way from the NIC interface on the HTPC to the switch to the extender looking for the problem. Could be a NIC going bad in the HTPC...could be a bad cable...could e the switch taking a crap....could be a number of things.

[rldev]

One of the potential issues I have is I have a lot of unmanaged switches. There is no way around it for me. There is a total of 3 unmanaged switches in any given media rack. The first switch connects from fios router and house feeds in the basement.

Fios Router > Switch 1 > Switch 2 (all house feeds connect to this gigabit switch via Cat6A) various feeds run from this switch to media racks in my house which have another switch for various equipment. > Switch 3 - runs to end components.
I just upgraded my fios router to gigabit, I will now bypass the first switch in the chain and go from there.

[Venom51]

Unmanaged switches that are known good working switches are fine. What you describe sound like at least one in your environment isn't a good working switch.

[rldev]

Unmanaged switches that are known good working switches are fine. What you describe sound like at least one in your environment isn't a good working switch.

Well everything was running fine for hours until bam, everything locked up simultaneously on two extenders. I had to reboot Switch 2 as everything became unresponsive. I'm starting to wonder if I would benefit from a managed switch.

(http://www.amazon.com/8PORT-200-08-SLM2 ... ged+switch)

[erkotz]

Unmanaged switches that are known good working switches are fine. What you describe sound like at least one in your environment isn't a good working switch.

Seconded

[TeddyR]

I know that yesterday was earth day... and this may not be in the spirit of earth day... but here goes ..

Is the switch connecting to the HTPC a "Green Ethernet" capable switch? If so, make sure that the driver for the NIC is the latest from the website of the NIC chipset maker(1), and then disable "Green Ethernet"/"Energy Efficient Ethernet"/"Green Technology"/"802.3az" in the advanced tab for the NIC.

I have seen it with both realtek based cards and some intel cards especially with Netgear GS108 switches and some tp-link switches but it may also affect other switches as well.

(1) - The drivers from the MB manufacturers or windows update is not the best driver for this issue. Some nic eeproms and older drivers have cards start up with it disabled while others start up with it enabled with no way to control the feature..

[rldev]

Yes it is a green switch. I don't see these settings for my intel nic card. All I see is:

Advanced
Wait for link
Wake on Link Settings
Wake on Magic Packet
Wake on Pattern Match

Power Management
Allow computer to turn off this device to save power
Allow this device to wake the computer
Only allow Magic packet to wake the computer

[TeddyR]

Either the card does not support the feature or you are using a really old driver. The windows 7 Intel latest driver (18.1) is at: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail ... pe=Drivers

There are several ways to get to the Advanced NIC settings.. here is one way (windows 7):

- Control Panel | Network And Sharing Center | Change Adapter Settings (on left pane) | Highlight the Card name, right click on properties | click on configure | click on Advanced tab.

[rldev]

I have the latest driver from intel with very advanced settings. You can run diagnostics, etc from this interface. I just see nothing titled "green".


I have an Intel CT Gigabit Desktop Adapter. This is not an old card.

[barnabas1969]

I've been leaning toward a failing switch since this thread first started. I had a similar problem. It was a failing switch. A new switch fixed the problem.

[rldev]

I guess the question now is should I move to a smart switch now where I have 6 extenders connected?

[erkotz]

If you don't know that you need a managed switch, you don't need one.

That said, the Dell Web Managed switches (PowerConnect 28xx) are dirt cheap, and have basic management functionality.

[barnabas1969]

If you don't know that you need a managed switch, you don't need one.

That said, the Dell Web Managed switches (PowerConnect 28xx) are dirt cheap, and have basic management functionality.

I bought one of these (used) based on Venom51's recommendation. The first one worked fine for a week, and then died. The 2nd one arrived with several dead ports. I returned it for a refund and bought this unmanaged one (new) and it's been working fine ever since.

I don't know if there is a high failure rate with the PowerConnect switches, but after two bad ones I wasn't willing to try again.

[rldev]

If you don't know that you need a managed switch, you don't need one.

That said, the Dell Web Managed switches (PowerConnect 28xx) are dirt cheap, and have basic management functionality.

I ask this because I have three different unmanaged switches, and all of them seem to have one issue or another.

[barnabas1969]

Having more switches doesn't necessarily mean that you need managed switches. A managed switch allows you to use QoS and a few other nice features like being able to diagnose a bad cable from the switch's management interface, but most home networks don't need them.

If it's possible for you to re-wire, you should do so to avoid daisy-chaining a bunch of switches together.

But before you go rewiring stuff or buying new switches, you should try bypassing one switch at a time to see if one of them is causing the problem. You can bypass them using a long Ethernet cable that you would (temporarily) string through your house from one switch to another in order to bypass one of the switches, or you could even use a female-female coupler to bypass a switch by connecting two of the cables together (temporarily). In both scenarios, you would also need to remove the bypassed switch from the equation to avoid loops in your network.

In any case, you really should go through a process of elimination to identify the problem before spending money on new switches.

[rldev]

That is what I will do. I have couplers, etc. Rewiring is not possible. This is why I used cat 6a and tested each line before closing up the ceiling. The internet feed comes through my office via coax(Fios) to modem/gigabit fios router. I dropped a line to my basement to the unmanaged switch. All of my feeds run from this switch, 7 feeds in total(5 extenders). It just not possible for me to not have multiple switches. But I can bypass any switch for testing.

Thanks.

[foxwood]

But before you go rewiring stuff or buying new switches, you should try bypassing one switch at a time to see if one of them is causing the problem.

I find it hard to believe that someone who has enough stuff hooked up to require 3 switches doesn't have some old gear that was swapped out during an upgrade sitting in the back of a cupboard that you could temporarily use to replace one of the switches for test purposes.

(I'm sure a sentence that convoluted would benefit from punctuation, but I can't quite see where to put it!)

[barnabas1969]

But before you go rewiring stuff or buying new switches, you should try bypassing one switch at a time to see if one of them is causing the problem.

I find it hard to believe that someone who has enough stuff hooked up to require 3 switches doesn't have some old gear that was swapped out during an upgrade sitting in the back of a cupboard that you could temporarily use to replace one of the switches for test purposes.

(I'm sure a sentence that convoluted would benefit from punctuation, but I can't quite see where to put it!)

Yeah, that would work too... if he has a known-good spare.

Your sentence looks correct to me.