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Yah... it’s the waterin’ hole in bvue.

So here’s a message that I just sent out to somebody. Kinda tells you how my afternoon/evening went. The LAN in the home office here crashed at about 4pm. Was a busy time for a few hours:

[name redacted],

Were you using the [redacted] conference room at around 4pm today? I only ask because you had it checked out at that time. Perhaps somebody was having trouble with that rats-nest of wiring trying to get somebody connected to the network?

Well, what happened was that somehow both ends of a network cable were plugged into that little blue (Netgear) switch box. This is what’s called a “loop-back” and unfortunately... that’s bad. That’s what caused the network to crash late this afternoon.

Please let me be clear... I’m not seeking any kind of blame or anything for this. Nobody was hurt. I’m pretty sure we’ll all live. I’ll keep it in confidence if you have any further information about what happened. I just want to make sure that whoever did that knows not to do that ever again.

If you’re thinking (as a reasonable person might) that something as simple as that should really not be able to cause such a mess... you’re right. Newer network switches are smarter and don’t pass problems upstream like that. But the network switches in that part of the building just happen to be among the older equipment we have, and it’s not so smart. We already have a plan to do something about that. We just haven’t gotten to it yet.

For the time being, I’ve confiscated that blue switch box, and the rats-nest, and left one long cable that someone can use if they need. If you have any questions or needs for connectivity please call [redacted] on the IT line and we’ll set you up.

Regards,

[ramius]