Today’s adventure on the road brings one to mind today. I made this appointment on Monday and didn’t think much of it at the time. The gentleman said he had an issue with his shared network. I figured a network problem; easy diagnosis and fix.

Was I ever wrong; what a nightmare. There was the ever-dreaded wires are everywhere issue. And I do mean everywhere. One good thing was; the owner of the household was very nice and even helped me uncoil all the cat5 wires.

The only way to figure out the problem was un-twine everything so I could get a clear picture of the problem at hand. He had a Netgear router on a Netgear switch of ten computers through his entire house on a shared network connection.

I noticed most of the led lights on the switch were on. All though I noticed right away that 4 Ethernet ports on the switch were not lit.

It literally took the both of us about 30 minutes of unraveling all the wires. Once we got all the wire separated, I noticed a few of the wires were frayed or cut somehow. I replaced the 4 wires in question.

Just a note; I noticed a few of the cat5 Ethernet wires were stapled to the wall and that’s where the wires were cut into. Never staple your cat5 cable to anything people. It always turns into a problem down the line.

Ethernet cables are usually the most frail and precious wires in your “Spaghetti-Factory” arsenal of wires. Take good care of them and keep them out of reach of heavy traffic areas.

Try and always keep your Ethernet cables in a place that can not be reached unless you wanted to get at them. I know this can be hard, but do your best.

So my little job today turned out to be a bigger job than I thought. Any technician could have diagnosed the problem just as quick as I did. He called an expert and he got top-notch professional service.

I got his network up and running and I was done in about an hour and a half. He also had me set his wireless security settings for his laptop.

So the moral of the story is; take good care of your Ethernet cables. Don’t staple them to anything. Use a twisty-tie or similar object to keep your wires as straight and neat as possible. Something this simple could throw your whole network off. Even if you have just one computer on a modem, take care of that Ethernet cable!

This stop was one of a few on my adventure today. This stop stood out today because it was a very simple fix that could have been avoided. I hope you enjoyed it and learned a little something.

If you ever have any questions feel free to email me
rc@rchubb.com

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