Lex Friedman used to edit and write at Macworld–a lot, lot, bunch of posts–and now works at a top podcast, advertising-sales, and content network. After moving into a brand new house lately as he believed he’d lost his marbles someplace in the wiring of his house, he called me.

Lex’s issue was that the house was pre-wired for ethernet, which is usually a great thing.

When stopped up into the broadband modem in his cellar via his new switch, the base station functioned good, acquiring an Internet connection with no problem.
When plugged in via one of the house’s internal ethernet “falls”–the jog in the walls from jack to jack–to the cellar switch, the base station could not get an IP address.
But when he stopped up the base station into the modem in the cellar, and plugged in upstairs in the switch, the switch had Internet access over ethernet.
Ethernet cables can not go good, and most folks do not have to troubleshoot this often since it is comparatively uncommon. It looked like among the runs in the walls of the house or either one of the ethernet patch cables was amazing, but his testing did not reveal a consistent issue because the network operated in some configurations and not others.

In the event the cable were not really functional, neither light needs to be lit up; some switches will reveal another LED colour or pattern for a cable that was poor, also.

(Additionally, never envelop your ethernet cables in a bow or closely.

Lex isolated all the internal runs and went back through and discovered an oddball scenario: even when nothing was plugged in at the end of it one of the links in his home, would bring about the internal network for fail. It probably has an electrical short, which isn’t safe –ethernet is low voltage and low amperage, when plugged in to a switch or device at other end, and would just carry a charge. Otherwise, it is not activated.

Internal wiring in this way should consistently used plenum- rated -gassing.

To make his network work, he only left that one run will replace it using a brand new cable, and disconnected.