[PLUG-TALK] this one weird trick...

[Galen Seitz]

will prevent your switch from passing traffic.

After replacing my old network switch with my new Zyxel GS1900-24E 
running OpenWRT, no traffic would pass through the switch.  After trying 
all sorts of pinging, and wondering whether I now had two DHCP servers 
on the same net, I finally realized the LEDs on the switch were flashing 
more rapidly than normal.  OK, time to start unplugging clients one by 
one.  Ah, when I unplug the blue cable, the flashing stops.  Where's 
that cable go?  It seems to loop around and, oh, it comes back to the 
switch.  Doh!  I successfully rediscovered something that Eric H. had 
described long ago.  Students in Paul Nelson's school had discovered 
that looping a cable on a network switch was a good way to get out of 
doing work.

galen
-- 
Galen Seitz
galens at seitzassoc.com