Present Perfect

Network

Yesterday I was working from home, and at noon I got a curious call from work that everyone was logged off of the main (Windows) server. I tried logging in and suffered 80% packet loss from both of our external IP's. So I couldn't get in and fix stuff or at least take a look around.

Then I got a call that our studio network was also down, and the codec we use to do our live broadcasts had also crashed.

Experience tells you that such diverse things do not happen without reason. This, however, seemed to be a one-of-a-kind experience.

I started driving to work but I knew I wouldn't make it in time, so I called the live broadcast people to get ready for a bare-bone broadcast, and I told the studio guy to disconnect the hub in the studio from the office hub, so that the studio might work again.

The second thing "fixed" it temporarily. At least the news could go on air as usual.

Investigating all of the logs of the linux machines revealed that there probably was a huge network spike at some point. All of the Realtek cards complained with the same error: Too much work at interrupt, IntrStatus=0x0001

I cannot for the life of me say though what caused it. It did make sense for the net result; even the codec for live broadcasting was plugged into the network for monitoring purposes.

Anyway, I decided it was time to physically separate the critical broadcast network from the office network. Only, the firewall/gateway I installed already had three network cards in it. So, time for an experiment.

An hour later, I managed to put 4 network cards in the same pentium/166 machine. That surely is a record for me - anyone topping that in an office environment ?

Network Yesterday I was working from home, and at noon I got a curious call from work that everyone was logged off of the main (Windows) server. I tried logging...