Weird network slowdown

[Linthade]

I recently replaced a 24 port 10mb hub with a 24 port 10/100 switch on a lan of about 23 users. Since i've changed them out, the users are reporting a slowdown in speed. It is the only concentrator on the lan.

It seems to get worse as the day goes on. They report that it can take 30-40 seconds just to save/close a small excel document. There were no reports of any such problems prior to "upgrading" the hardware to a 10/100 switch.

All of the network cards on the lan are 10/100 cards. I've replaced the nic on the server just for good measure but no change. At this point it looks like i'm going to have to return the 10mb hub to active service to eliminate a slowdown (which makes no sense whatsoever).

Help?

*lin*

[Milenko]

Are you sure that the building is wired properly for 100Mbit Ethernet? Many old wiring installs were wired properly for 10, but not 100Mbit. Now that you installed a switch capable of 100Mbit, your clients are now trying to run at 100 instead of 10. If the wiring isn't proper, it'll do exactly what you describe.

The proper wiring for a patch cable for 100Mbit ethernet is:

Orange-white/Orange/Green-white/Blue/Blue-white/Green/Brown-white/Brown

Proper pinouts of the RJ-45 jacks in the wall (if installed) vary by manufacturer, but they should be labeled on the jack. There are two way to wire the jack, A and B, you want to wire according to B. B is the 100Mbit standard.

Hope this helps,

-Mil

[ilovetheusers]

We recently had an issue with Dell machines not working out well with mostly Cisco 2950 switches but almost anything really. They would not connect at all or would run super slow.

Solution was to hard code all devices to what they should be in the switch and on the device. i.e. if it was a brand new dell we made the port 100/full and the PC 100/full. It solved the issue for the most part. No idea why it did that, we upgraded the IOS on some to see if that was it and loaded multiple sets of drivers. Turned out the Dells just had crappy NIC's.


Also, check your network settings. Sometimes the VLAN or the Subnet of a switch will be incorrect and it will pass information still but will do it sloooooowly. I had a site with a class B 10.#.#.# address I put a C address on the switch and it worked but was slow in the extreme. All I had missed was one 0 and it hosed everything up.