Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Wall jack for network not working

Sad but true. What seems to some of us, who are of the tech support persuasion, to be the simplest of problems people are willing to pay for. I had a customer today that originally called because of a wireless problem (I'll get to that later) but while I was there they mentioned another problem. There were two wall jacks that they claimed weren't working. They in fact weren't. I checked them both with my laptop and my own patch cord - neither connected. Not even a link light on my network adapter. I toned out the line to see what port they were terminated on in their data room. Well, well, well... there was no patch cord connecting neither port on the patch panel to any data switch. I popped one on and viola I connected. I toned the second line out and it was the same problem - no network cord connecting the patch panel termination of the data run to the network switch. They paid for this. Just by applying some simple troubleshooting and basic knowledge would have resolved that network problem in-house.

It was an easy day so far - except I was in the city in the afternoon which meant a 2 hour ride home. I took on the wireless problem - this get a little more mysterious.

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