My computer messing up network?

[cybertron]

This will require some explanation, so bear with me. Essentially what happened is that we are having a LAN party, and I was setting up a UT2004 server on someone else's machine. I had downloaded the files to mine the night before so I could just transfer them over the 100 meg switched network to the actual server instead of downloading them and wasting 3 hours or so. The problem was that everyone on the switch I was plugged into was getting lousy bandwidth (~200 or 300 k), so just transferring an almost 1 gig file was going to take forever.

Since my computer and the server were plugged into different switches, I tried plugging mine directly into the server's switch to see if that would solve the problem. Basically, it did. The problem was that it also solved the problem on the original switch and all of a sudden everyone started getting normal performance.

This of course led to suspicion about my network card being bad or something, but other than this one instance I've never had any trouble with it, so I find it hard to believe.

What I'm hoping is that one of the network experts here, which none of us at this party are, can give me a different explanation. Any ideas?

TIA

[blobaugh]

does the server send out any networking setting? and maybe your computer didnt refresh them on the new switch? i dunno, that doesnt sound plausible. how were the switches connected? uplink port? switch to switch?

[The Whizzard]

...lousy bandwidth (~200 or 300 k)... I'm thinking that the "switch" you were originaly connected to was not a switch but a hub. Or the port you were connected to on the switch is bad or the switch it self. There's no explanation I know of otherwise.

[cybertron]

Good to know I'm not the only one skeptical.:)

I'm pretty sure everything there was a switch, although I can't vouch for that because I didn't actually see it. They're even working on upgrading to gigabit, which may have been part of the problem as we had them mixed at this party.

The server's switch was kind of the main 24 port switch which connected to our outside internet uplink. All of the other switches were smaller (8 port?) and plugged into a port on that one I think, but again I didn't help with the setup on that part. Come to think of it, for about half an hour at the beginning of the party no one at my table could get an IP address from the DHCP server either, and this was before my computer was even hooked up. I forgot about that last night (3:00 in the morning will do that to you;)), but a bad switch is starting to seem like the best explanation to me.

I guess I don't really have to worry about it unless it happens again at the next LAN party anyway since the card works fine for me. Thanks for the suggestions guys.

[soulestream]

if you have pc -->switch1 -->switch2-->server

then any pc hooking into switch1 that is using the server is going to have slow bandwidth when another computer is transfering large files to the server cause they are using the same port. pc's on switch one communicating with each other on switch one should not notice much bandwidth loss.


a hub would also cause this problem, but reconfiguring them the second way you mentioned if you were using a hub would not have fixed your problem.


soule

[cybertron]

Yeah, another funny thing about it was that it didn't really seem like a bandwidth problem. I could start as many transfers as I liked and they would all go around 200 k, but I couldn't get a single one over that limit.

I'm thinking that next party I may hook the server up behind my wireless router and forward the appropriate ports to it. That way I won't have to plug a monitor in to it to get the IP address; I can just plug my computer into the router and use the webadmin interface. Plus I won't have to fight with the occasionally shaky network either;)