You may be wondering what the hell happened to the LAN??? Well its a long story, but the short version goes as follows: -
The LAN originally started out with a bunch of 3COM SuperStacker switches (forgetting about the original DLINK 24 Port 10/100), now these where great for a beginners switch having capacity for 24 10/100 ports, and 1 x 1000Mbps fiber backbone (which we used to link the switches). These switches worked great for quiet a few months, until someone who will remain nameless decided to clean the office area at Table Tennis in which these switches where stored. Now any bright person when trying to clean around the switches would have a) Not cleaned under the switches, therefor negating the need to move them, or b) Moved them carefully and placed them somewhere secure while cleaning. But no, our dim witted fiend decided to move them, and by move them i mean pick them up and throw them across the room into a wall.. This resulted in non-working Fiber ports, and more than likely at least a few broken solder joints…
Over the next couple of LAN’s these switches started to die one by one, we originally started off with 6 after mere months we where down to three…
It was then the admins decided we needed a new switch, so keeping an eye out on ebay (as you do) we managed to pick up a HP ProCurve 8000M, which delivered 72 10/100 ports, more than enough to cater for the LAN in one massive switch. This then served the LAN quiet fine over the next year or so, until a person who will remain nameless (yes the same nameless person) decided it would be a good idea to place a coke slab on top. Now instead of evenly placing the slab on top of the switch (if you really had the necessity at all to place the slab on the switch), nameless person decided to place it on one of the corners, which where reasonably sharp when meeting with a solid and heavy object. This quickly resulted in one can of coke promptly emptying its contents into the back of the switch.
While non of the admins where aware of this ever happening, the night before the next LAN, which is setup night, we proceeded to plug in and power on the switch. At our astonishment the switch quickly crackled and caught fire…… The night before the LAN it caught fire…….. : /
Not being disheartened by this, although the room could only be occupied by adults at this time, due to the excessive swearing and anger management issues, we quickly set upon retrieving the last of the 3COM switches from one of the Admin’s houses.
Throughout the LAN that next day, users and admins noticed the network becoming slower and slower as the night went on. Now this wasnt due to contention or bandwidth usage, as login to the switches showed only 30-50% usage of both the switch and backbone capacity.. Early in that morning we said goodbye to our last switches, as they transferred their final packets and died. They had carried us through the night and gone out with a bang.
This then left the LAN with no switch, and the majority of the admins where in no position to outlay extra cash after paying for the last HP switch to purchase another one. So up until now we have had to cancel the LAN until further notice..
WELL THAT NOTICE IS HERE…. The LAN has finally got a new switch, although this switch has not been tested or configured (as i picked it up 2 days ago…). I will ensure that this switch is tested this week with results being posted on this site..
The new switch details are: -
Make : Cisco :/
Model : 5509
Capacity : 148 10/100 Ports
So here is our new switch. After 4 hours of scanning Class A Subnets to find the address, (as it appears the Console port on the switch is dead), I managed to find the IP address of the switch.