Three hours chasing a phantom IP conflict that was just a bad cable

Last Tuesday I spent three hours swapping settings and renewing leases on a client's network because two PCs kept dropping offline. Turned out it was a frayed Cat5e cable behind their desk that only failed when someone bumped the chair. Everyone online swore it was a DHCP scope issue or a rogue device, so I went down that rabbit hole first. I should have just replaced the cable from the start and saved myself the headache. Has anyone else wasted time overthinking a simple physical layer problem?

3 comments

3 Comments

richard_dixon28d ago

Oh, that's a familiar feeling. I started keeping a known-good cable and a cheap tester in my bag after a similar wild goose chase a couple years back. Now I always swap the physical link first before touching any software settings, it saves me from chasing ghosts every time.

the_margaret28d ago

Fair point, but sometimes the quickest test saves the most time.

gavinw4528d ago

Wait, isn't that going to make you miss software bugs that look like cable problems?