Interesting network story

By tim_s
in Smart Home, Network & Security

 Share

Recommended Posts

Rising Star

tim_s

Posted
Posted

Hi Everyone,

Had an interesting network story that I thought I would share - just for fun since the issue has been resolved.

At our shipping office we have a 3 floor building design,

Bottom: Warehouse (Contains 1 Wireless Access point for scanning hardware)

Middle: Offices (Contains 2 Wireless Access points - General Office and Meeting Room)

Top: Shipping Customer Services Team (Contains 1 Wireless Access point)

The segregation is both imposed on us by security regulatory bodies and our own internal practices. Another piece of information that is important, during the original concept of the office networks ? the offices was designed to have shielding to segregate the wireless networks to prevent interference and restrict the network uses. - This never happened and thus the wireless networks are visible through the network.

On Thursday around 4:30 PM, I was cc'd on an email to the email department that the email server is not working and this was based on the return notice mentioning that it failed to find the server. A team was dispatched to diagnose the issue. This was isolated to the one office - we have global offices not encountering any issues.

On Friday a select group of people lost the internet completely, cell phones, laptops etc. Only the desktops functioned. A separate team was dispatched to investigate this issue as it was common to many people. What was odd is that the same people on the same floor using the same hardware had different experiences and this was throughout the building.

What was odd, everyone had one item in common. Everyone using Ethernet was functional but everyone using wireless failed to find the internet. The symptoms for everyone was the same ? they can connect to the wireless networks but nobody could reach the internet. I was requested to the location to guide the team in person due to the productivity loss.

I noticed immediately that my Laptop (Macbook Pro) failed and so did my cell phone, I could connect but the internet was never found. 4 different networks died in 1 day ? not possible statistically without other factors involved. Different isolated power boxes, I brought a wireless access point with me and immediately showed the same symptoms.

We began debugging the equipment, Wireless access points confirmed access to the internet ? when patched in directly ? you could achieve the internet. Vendors could not find the problem and my reluctance to start re-arranging the networks without a reason for failure was just going to get messy.

4 hours passed and I had a team I was paying plus vendors and so I put in a request for new hardware from a separate vendor to be placed within the building. We literally just changed the Wireless access points and the network became functional.

We ran diagnosing software to map out channels, signal strength, local networks and everything was spot on (Slight overlapping within 2 access points as we still must support 2.4GHz products and have 4 networks but this has always been the case.)

Just found it interesting and nobody can figure out why ? my guess is that one of the devices became faulty and was adding to the noise levels interfering with the connectivity but even then ? How would they have connected to the access point?

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1130526-interesting-network-story/
Share on other sites
Grand Master

+BudMan MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

How is this an interesting story?

What does "I could connect but the internet was never found" mean?

Like telling a story between mechanics

yeah so this car didn't work, so we changed the engine - and it started working ;)

When you say wireless clients "can connect to the wireless networks" I assume you mean they were associated to the accesspoint in their area. So did they get an IP from your dhcp server, or are they static assigned? Could they not ping the gateway? Could they not do DNS? You say they could not "find" the internet - but what about local devices, could they connect to them, could they resolve them by name? Was your gateway not seeing any traffic from any wireless clients -- connected to different AP. You mention segregation, so these different floors AP are on different network segments/vlans? So the router they connect to for the 3 segments?? Not seeing the packets from any wireless device on any segment?

How about some actual something to get us interested in the characters in the story, or the details of the problem at hand, or how it was actually troubleshooted, etc.

What we have here is is a lack of basic troubleshooting info. Nothing to find the root cause of the issue with. So we replaced the hardware without a clue to what was wrong and then it worked. ;) Lets see wireless doesn't work - so lets change out all the AP.. That's like taking your computer to tech, and him saying yeah don't know why that happens - here buy this new computer.

No offense or anything - but don't see how this is interesting at all other than making yourself look unqualified on how to troubleshoot basic networking issues.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • Google is opening the world's first AI museum in Los Angeles

      By excalpius · Posted

      >defenders of AI-generated artworks often claim that AI is just a tool It is not. It is the inhuman artist replacement. The human writing the prompt is the employer/manager requesting the work product of the artist -- a supervisory/descriptive job that doesn't carry with it any rights to the copyright of that work product at all. And since AI is not human itself, it can't gain copyright for anything it is asked to regurgitate or hallucinate, so it can't transfer that copyright to the employer/manager/human who asked for the output. This was all legally reaffirmed last year. So, no, while there are AI tools, AI slopware generation is NOT a "tool" in the legal definition of that word.
    • We now know when and how the Universe may truly end

      By cyberhash · Posted

      As long as i get to play GTA 6 before it ends 😂😂
    • Google is opening the world's first AI museum in Los Angeles

      By Ivan Jenic · Posted

      Google is opening the world's first AI museum in Los Angeles by Ivan Jenic Image via: Google Ever since AI image generators went mainstream, the debate over whether AI-generated art is real art hasn't let up. Those who don’t consider AI to be art say that if a machine does the creating and anyone can prompt it, there’s no skill involved, and therefore no art is produced. The counter-argument is equally persistent, as defenders of AI-generated artworks often claim that AI is just a tool, and that every major technological breakthrough, like the camera or the computer, was met with the same skepticism before eventually being accepted as a legitimate creative medium. Google’s position in this debate is clear. Which is no surprise, as the company is investing billions in AI infrastructure. And now, in efforts to encourage people to use its AI even more, Google is opening Dataland on June 20, which it's calling the world's first AI arts museum. Located inside The Grand LA, a Frank Gehry-designed building in Los Angeles, the museum spans 25,000 square feet. The museum is built around a collaboration with media artist Refik Anadol, who has worked with Google since 2016. The inaugural exhibition is called Machine Dreams: Rainforest, and is powered by an AI model trained on “an extensive dataset of the natural world.” It generates 1.2 billion pixels of visuals in real time and reacts to visitors dynamically. The space also generates soundscapes, real-time emotion sensing, and algorithmically produced scents. Image via: Refik Anadol Studio / Google Google says that the museum is powered by its Gemini models, which run on Google Cloud. So, everything is generated inside one of Google’s AI data centers and is streamed to the museum. Alongside the museum opening, Google Arts & Culture is funding an AI Artist Residency, giving four artists $25,000 grants each, along with mentorship from Refik Anadol Studio and access to Google's machine learning tools. Their work will be shown at Dataland and on the Google Arts & Culture website later this year. Google’s AI museum will undoubtedly initiate a fired-up debate on social media, and we can’t wait to see the first reactions. Via: Smithsonian Magazine
    • Rockstar confirms Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders begin next week, unveils cover art

      By TCA · Posted

      Calling GTA 6 overhyped crap doesn’t make you edgy, it just makes you sound like someone who hasn’t enjoyed anything since the PS2 era.
    • Rockstar confirms Grand Theft Auto VI pre-orders begin next week, unveils cover art

      By TCA · Posted

      I’m not arguing whether Rockstar likes money. Obviously, they do, they’re a business. I’m saying this isn’t new. They’ve always launched console first. This is just how Rockstar operates.

  • Recent Achievements

    • First Post
      AndreaB earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      Huge Trailer earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      Classifyskilleducation earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Month Later
      eurospharma62 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      With What earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      571
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      178
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      74
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      68
    5. 5
      neufuse
      64
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!