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Thread: Insufficient ports causing grief

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    Default Insufficient ports causing grief

    Good morning team
    I habe nbn fibre to curb connected to my vendor supplied 4 port wifi tplink router
    I have a wired network printer
    Wired pc for son
    Due to running out of wired ports i have a cable from the router to a tplink 5 port unmanaged switch
    Hanging off the tplink switch is my media streamer, my foxtel IQ, my cctv server via a ethernet over power extender thing to upstairs

    Problem is that randomly the small tp link 5 port goes offline/asleep. I can bring it all back to life again by power cycling the 5 port switch and it works for up to 3 or 4 hours or a day then it happens again

    I have replaced the 5 port already and it still happens

    Any clues or better way to get at least 8 wired network ports via my nbn connection ?

    Wife unhappy she can’t get netflix if i am at work and she refuses to touch even a simple power lead for fear of everything going bang 😝

    Happy wife happy life, help a bloke out 😛

    Cheers
    Mike



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    How old is the tplink 5 port unmanaged switch? They typically don't offlne/sleep mode as such, so the behaviour seems more like a fault with the switch itself.

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    I bought 2 about 2 weeks ago, i tried a dlink oldone i had was doing the same thing so that was why i got some newer ones.

    This is rather frustrating

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    Hmmm.... that suggests the arp cache is being corrupted or something screwy. I take it this ?was? working previously? Did something change? (added computer/network device?) What diagnostics have you done?...(like ping from one computer to another across the switch, ping the gateway from each computer). Any specific usage scenario when this happens?

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    Quote Originally Posted by wotnot View Post
    Hmmm.... that suggests the arp cache is being corrupted or something screwy. I take it this ?was? working previously? Did something change? (added computer/network device?) What diagnostics have you done?...(like ping from one computer to another across the switch, ping the gateway from each computer). Any specific usage scenario when this happens?
    I added foxtel iq and the cctv eop device around the same time and it has always been an issue

    I guess i take one offline and see if the problem persists as a means of diagnosis

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    It's as good a place to start as any, if one is not savvy with network meanderings =)

    Possibly the first thing to spring to mind, is one of the introduced devices, has an active DHCP server running on it, and this is conflicting with the DHCP server that's very likely running on your gateway/router device -- that'd explain why the switch was losing the plot, as it could've been seeing host packets with the same MAC bound to a different IP...fits the symptoms you've described thus far. Not sure of the time of 3-4hours, but then that could be the lease duration set, by this hypothetical 2nd DHCP server on your network.

    No idea if an IQ box ships default with any DHCP turned on, EoP devices are more or less transparent bridges and only perhaps the wifi models come with DHCP builtin, CCTV controller/systems however often have a DHCP builtin to toss IP to net/wifi cams and the like.

    I think quickest way is to fire up wireshark and filter on UDP ports 67, 68 and see which (or how many) machines are squawking DHCP broadcast packets 8)

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    mrtor (14-08-21)

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    Just for the sake of finishing my thread, thanks to the suggestion of dhcp with the cctv system, i changed it to a fixed IP and left my foxtel, media streamer as dhcp and it hasn’t missed a beat in 5 days so I am confident that was my issue.

    Thank you all

    Cheers
    Mike

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    Yeah, I suspect that'll be the issue ~ generally speaking the rule is 1 DHCP server per network (segment, because technically you can have more than 1, but all the IP addresses must be unique to each dhcp server instance)

    Generally speaking, most folks dhcp server config is very much underdone (factory settings with the IP pool size the entire width of 192.168.1.0/24), and it's not the best of ideas. One should really limit the dhcp ip pool down to the number of client machines in the house, and use address reservation via MAC address for the clients..blabla...

    In net-ops, you'd come across this bad/stale arp cache tango, if ever a server machine suffered a NIC failure - replace the network card, get the server up and running again, and then quickly run about the room resetting every hub/switch, to let the new MAC propagate.

    edit: just saw something here bound to cause confusion...ie; how can switching from 'use dhcp' to 'use fixed ip' result in the cctv box shutting down it's dhcp server? I've seen a lot of these devices, when you select use dhcp, it defaultly puts the unit into dhcp *server* mode -- sometimes, in some firmwares (not all) at least, once dhcp is enabled, you can select between server and *client* mode, on the dhcp settings page, and in client mode the server daemon is shut down, and just the client service is left running.
    Last edited by wotnot; 20-08-21 at 11:19 PM.

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