Intermittent signal loss on home LAN - causes?

[greatwhite]

Hi All,

Perhaps someone can help? Some years back when building onto my house, I took the plunge and put conduit into the walls for LAN cable, then fitted CAT6 solid cable and hooked up to an entry level 24 Gigabit switch. For some time the LAN performed fine to the areas that it was serving, but recently, there has been a gradual drop in reliability of the LAN. At first I would occasionally loose one of the connection to my study, then the second line to the study started giving uphill and the 1st one doesn't work at all now, I also noticed the longest run to the bedroom started also became intermittent. The line to my AP also dropped out for a while.

At first moving RJ45 plugs from 1 port on the switch to another seemed to resolve the issue, leading me to believe some of the ports were toast, but now it doesn't. However, If I swap a working line with a non working line, the working line will carry on working on the new port (that didn't work on the other troublesome line).

Has anyone had experience like this and what did you find was the problem? Are there any tricks, those involved with networking might be able to offer to sort the problem before I start spending money on new hardware or cabling?

Thanks in advance for any help

 

[Speedster]

Hi All,

Perhaps someone can help? Some years back when building onto my house, I took the plunge and put conduit into the walls for LAN cable, then fitted CAT6 solid cable and hooked up to an entry level 24 Gigabit switch. For some time the LAN performed fine to the areas that it was serving, but recently, there has been a gradual drop in reliability of the LAN. At first I would occasionally loose one of the connection to my study, then the second line to the study started giving uphill and the 1st one doesn't work at all now, I also noticed the longest run to the bedroom started also became intermittent. The line to my AP also dropped out for a while.

At first moving RJ45 plugs from 1 port on the switch to another seemed to resolve the issue, leading me to believe some of the ports were toast, but now it doesn't. However, If I swap a working line with a non working line, the working line will carry on working on the new port (that didn't work on the other troublesome line).

Has anyone had experience like this and what did you find was the problem? Are there any tricks, those involved with networking might be able to offer to sort the problem before I start spending money on new hardware or cabling?

Thanks in advance for any help

Step 1 is to borrow a switch to see if that resolves the issue. If not I'd buy (or borrow) a simple cable tester. It could be that some rats have chewed through some of the cabling

 

[Speedster]

Here is an example of the tester you're looking for

https://scoop.co.za/linkbasic-utp-cable-tester.html

 

[Geoff.D]

How did you do the permanent cabling? Did you terminate the cables on wall sockets? Or, just terminate the cables on RJ45 connectors?
If the first then you will need to inspect the wall sockets to see if there is anything funny going on inside. If the latter, then it could be that the connectors are simply worn. Hope you used good quality connectors.
The tester should help a lot in determining what the problem is though.

 

[greatwhite]

Step 1 is to borrow a switch to see if that resolves the issue. If not I'd buy (or borrow) a simple cable tester. It could be that some rats have chewed through some of the cabling

I took a little 8 port switch and plugged in all the lines that are giving up hill and viola, it all worked....

Curious that the 24 port switch has an issue like that. Almost like it has got tired and now can't power longer cable runs.... Contrary to my previous experience which suggests with digital equipment which tends to be it either works or it doesn't

 

[greatwhite]

Thank you both for the replies. I might still invest in a cable tester as you both suggested - was already pondering it before posting here.

 

[Geoff.D]

Thank you both for the replies. I might still invest in a cable tester as you both suggested - was already pondering it before posting here.

Unfortunately, the low end multi port switches are not all that robust. You need to go for a high quality product. But before doing that, first verify the cabling, as there could be a latent fault some where that needs fixing first. The cost of a tester is small compared to on going equipment replacement.