Wednesday 17 October 2007

Ahh... the uplink port on an ethernet hub

I've had my little hub for years and never looked at the 'uplink' port as anything special. If i had to guess it would this is the one you connect to the router. Turns out it's the most badly named piece of kit ever made. It has nothing to do with uplinking. All it means is that the standard crossover cable can't be used on that port. Once i stopped using it and rebooted all devices in sight the network starts to shine again. If you have to use it use a non-cross cable. Mine's a cheap little hub and these often share port 1 with the uplink port. You can't use both together. So it's one of t'other. Yes, i feel miles behind on networking knowledge now but it's always the small things that you think you're familiar with that you always ignore. Pirsig had the same pain with a little nut on his bike and all of a sudden that little nut or ethernet port suddenly becomes all important.

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