home networking - 3com OfficeConnect 8 port switch freezes/crashes?
2014-04
AttributedTensorField
I have some old 3com OfficeConnect 8 port switches. I have two of them, switch A and switch B, connected together and some hosts connected to the ports of both switches.
When I let a host on switch A perform high speed data transfer with a host on switch B, both switches lock up.
E.g. if I do a simple scp [some large files] to a computer on the other switch, then I notice that scp has stopped transferring any data, and that all the computers on these two switches no longer have any connection. After a few seconds, or maybe up to half a minute, things have returned to normal.
I do not experience this problem with low speeds (hundreds of kB/s), but I do experience it at > 10 MB/s transfer rates. The problem appears to happen every time I try to replicate it. But I have not tried to find the "maximum speed" I can transfer data at without crashing the switches.
This switch has a dedicated "uplink port" on port 8. [1] To use this port as an uplink port there is a button on the back of the switch must be engaged to explicitly state that this port is being used for uplink. I have this button engaged on switch B. Switch B is connected to switch A from port 8 on switch B to port 5 on switch A. This appears to be the correct setup.
I have tried using other ports on switch A.
I have tried different computers, it is not a computer issue.
I have tried a different (but same make/model) switch (I have several of them).
What is causing this? Is it a firmware bug, the switch being unable to handle that different MACs are using a single port, even with this "uplink feature" enabled? Is there some way to work around it?
I doubt it is relevant but I'm using Gentoo and Slackware on these computers and IPv4.
[1] http://ec1.images-amazon.com/media/i3d/01/A/man-migrate/MANUAL000035870.pdf
user20336
I currently have a Linksys WRT160N that has a couple wireless clients and a few wired clients. We are planning to switch from DSL to cable and unfortunately, there isn't a cable point in a location close to the wired clients (i.e. the new location of the router would be too far from the wired clients to lay Ethernet cables).
Thus, I was wondering if there was a wireless switch of some sort in which it would be a standard Ethernet switch that would connect to my wireless network? (This is a home network,of course.)