Sometimes you just need to shake your head and mumble good grief!
As a person who spent several decades in computer software: configurations, setup, testing, troubleshooting, network installations, network troubleshooting, and network testing, I occasionally feel qualified to pronounce something to be in the “WTF category.”
On more than one occurence recently, I have come to experience situations where the problem was the ethernet cable! I had full regard for my scepticism about my own findings, so I repeated the troubleshooting steps. In one particular case, some components in a computer lab where I contract were not communicating, but worked successfully independently. I was stymied. So in a last ditch effort, I replaced the ethernet cable that connected them. Lo and behold, everything then worked. So as to confirm my hypothesis, I tested again with the original cable, and failure resumed.
While I had appreciated static or passive items like an ethernet cable to be breakdown-proof, that evidently is not the case. I am not an manufacturing specialist, so my conclusions are my own. Let’s look at why a cable might not last perfectly forever.
- Cables are manufactured by the millions in (likely) automated factories in China.
- Manufacturing quality control would never be able to test even a small fraction of the cables.
- A variety of materials of perhaps often or dubious quality likely are used to manufacture cables.
- While initial manufactured items may be of good quality, in an effort to cut costs, eventually lower quality materials are used in manufacturing.
- Tolerances decline as they no longer what they were initially designed to be.
- Variances that were passable with original materials, no longer are satisfactory with newer poorer quality materials..
- Time degrade everything, including static objects.
Appreciation
So, this last week I had a problem at my home-based network. Troubleshoot it as I did, I could at first not detect the source of the problem. So I assumed the problem was my ISP’s network. I called Comcast. I wish to acknowledge the technician who on the phone quoted me a $75.00 service call. The distress of that possibility lead to my saying “I’ll think about it.” And I decided to do a little more troubleshooting. As I had the experience a few week earlier of replacing an ethernet cable in the customer’s computer lab to successfully troubleshoot a failure, I decided it would behoove me to do more testing at home. Voila!
What solution did you encounter that you would have never initially suspected? Send your comment here: Contact.
The stamp seal of a quail is from Iran, near Lake Van (now in modern Turkey), from the 3-4 millennium BC. Courtesy Cleveland Museum of Art.
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