Weird: Intel Printserver Blocks All Traffic?!
 

Hi,

To give an overview of how my home LAN is setup, here is a diagram (it may not be of any significance

PC2 Wifi AP PC3 Printserver
| | | |
Internet <--> [ADSL Router] <---> [D-Link Switch]
| |
PC1 Laptop

The printserver is a Intel Netport Express 10/100, with 2 x parallel ports and 1 x serial port. It has been functioning fine until recently, where when it is plugged into the switch, it blocks all traffic from the switch to the rest of the nework, for anything. When the printserver is not plugged into the LAN then everything works fine.

I am not sure why it would do this... Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks in advance

Just a WAG, but is it possible that the print server has picked up the IP address of the router or one of the other devices on the network?

interesting point, does a switch have an IP address on a network? i didnt think it did, though i might be wrong.

It does stop all traffic to/from the D-Link switch to the rest of the network, so this is the most likely suggestion.

Also, my ADSL router is the DHCP server for the network, so shouldn't that stop IP conflicts?

Actually I don't think the switch has an IP. Usually they are pretty dumb pieces of hardware. I was suggeting that the print server had the same IP as another device on the network like the router or another computer. If everything is running on DHCP then a conflict is unlikely, but if you are mixing DHCP with static IP then there might be a problem. I'd still check into what devices have what IP.

Are there any "special" ports on the switch? What I'm getting at is are there any ports that are designed for specific tasks like connecting to the router or might need a crossover cable. Usually they don't, but it might be worth a look in the manual.

The other thing to try might be to listen to your network traffic with something like ethereal. I'd do it with the printer server unattached to get a baseline of what kind of traffic is normal and then plug in the print server and see if anything changes.

Needless to say I don't have any real explanations for what your are seeing, I'm just suggesting some ways to try and figure out what is happening.

As regard to special ports, the router has an uplink port which is connected with a patch cable to a normal port on the switch. I think the uplink port has the same effect as a crossover cable.

I certainly will try watching stuff with ethereal, and will let you know the results.