Re: Intel Mac Mini: loses internet connection

I feel your pain. I would like nothing more than to rip out the old and
put in the current standard which is another world.

Unfortunately you're stuck with it until your department pays for the
upgrade, we have a seismic retrofit in the building, or divine
intervention occurs. (Normally I'd add the occasional if rare funding
exception, but given the state budget, see divine intervention).

The point I have to repeatedly make is that whatever the network costs,
not having it costs more. Take all the salaries being paid and burn the
percentage wasted waiting or lost when it's broken. I guarantee that
this is more expensive to the department than the network within months
at most. Probably weeks. If only the ledger reflected this...

I do encourage you to file trouble tickets *every single time* you have
an unworkable network. This will be tracked, and the pain is then
visible to those above via reports.

-Jay

Pedro Alvarez Jr wrote:
> I could use LOTS of friendly campus neighborhood network guys! The
> Chavez network is getting older and older and deteriorating daily.
> When we (Student Learning Center, et al) moved in we had an Appletalk
> network which used Cat 3 wiring most of which was not replaced when we
> upgraded to the current out-dated, ancient almost unusable 10mb shared
> ethernet. I was hoping that we would get another upgrade before I
> retire (5-6 years or with a possible VERIP for staff 1-2 years!!!) but
> it looks like that won't happen. In the meantime:
>
> I transferred the info from the Intel Mac Mini to a PowerPC G5. I
> started with a fresh Leopard install and was able to download and
> install all the updates. As of right now, the Filemaker Server is
> purring along and is quite stable. I'll continue to monitor. And
> this certainly doesn't mean that something is not quite right with the
> network. We are always having problems. With all the students in the
> building watching streaming videos or staff listening to online radio,
> its a wonder we can get any work done!
>
> But this does point to a hardware problem with the Mac Mini which I
> will take in for repair come January.
>
> Thanks for your reply. Enjoy the upcoming holiday!
> -Pete
>
> Jay Bryon wrote:
>> As your friendly campus neighborhood network guy, I'd advise opening
>> a trouble ticket to have somebody come by and check out the network
>> connection: trouble_at_berkeley.edu or 2-8500. Give them the cable id
>> in question, that speeds things up considerably.
>> CRC errors are generally an indication that something thrashed a
>> packet, and something on the network isn't quite right. Combined
>> with your symptoms, it's possible that you've got a network issue,
>> particularly if it's shared-10mb. It may also be a misbehaving host
>> or user attached gear taking the network out of spec (which is why we
>> prohibit that on shared-10mb).
>> -J
>>
>> Pedro Alvarez Jr wrote:
>>> Hi All,
>>> I've been in a heap of trouble over the last two days and on and off
>>> over the last couple of months. This Mac Mini will go 'offline'
>>> regularly. I notice this when I try to control it from home with
>>> Remote Desktop. Its running Leopard and Filemaker Server Advanced
>>> 9. Yesterday it just simply wouldn't maintain the connection to the
>>> internet. I was trying to download the latest OSX update. It would
>>> hang and then I knew that the connection was lost.
>>> I've reformatted it a couple of times reinstalling Leopard.
>>> (Currently its running 10.5.1)
>>>
>>> I ran applejack and got this line a while repairing permissions:
>>>
>>> Appleyukon2-bad packet received. Length 1438, packet status bits:
>>> Multicast packet, crc error.
>>>
>>> Anyone have a clue as to what might be going on. Is this the fault
>>> of the ancient network and equipment in this building? Is the
>>> computer itself in need of repair?
>>>
>>> Thanks in advance!
>>> -Pete
>>> --
>>> Pedro (Pete) Alvarez Jr
>>> Information Systems
>>> Student Learning Center
>>> University of California
>>> Berkeley, CA 94720 4260
>>> (510) 642-9130
>>> fax (510) 643-7879
>>> helmetcalband
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>
>>>
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>

-- 
Jay Bryon
Senior Network Engineer, U.C. Berkeley/IST/IS/NSO 
jay_at_berkeley.edu
2-5636
"Any idiot can be complex, it takes real genius to be simple"
-Al Einstein
[Unless stated explicitly otherwise, all opinions are my own (or Al's) and do not represent official policy of any part of IST, U.C. Berkeley or the U.C. Regents.]  
 
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