h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So I brought the whole office to a screetching halt today. We've got a very good technical system here, which involves keeping our IT people a 2 hour drive away in Window Rock, calling them out every once in a while, and then using anyone in the office under 40 as tech support at all other times. Our IT guy was here yesterday, so of course we discovered a new problem this morning, with him back in Window Rock.

"William," our paralegal says, "I'm trying to talk to Dave* in Window Rock, and he's tried everything to get my printer to work, but it won't print. He wants me to check whether all the cables are in right."

Wiggling around a Cat-5 is certainly within the realm of my talents, so I check to make sure the printer is connected to that data port properly. It is. We try printing, nothing.

"Dave says he tried everything else from his end."

A thought occurs to me. I wheel the printer into another room, plug it into another data port and sure enough, every test page we had attempted to print comes right through. But we can't keep the printer there, a computer is supposed to plug into that port. That's when I get my worst idea of the day.

"When Steve* [the other IT guy] was here yesterday, he fixed a dead data port like this. He said it was 'relatively simple.' Ask Dave if this is so simple a cave man- er, attorney coudl do it."

Five minutes later, an email from Steve: the cables marked M-1 and M-2 need to be plugged into the switch that's up on the shelf. I know which switch he means, so I go rooting around for the cables. Apparently marking on a Cat-5 is a tricky business. I choose M-1 and, apparently, N-2, instead of M-2. For a moment the printer seems to be about to work. Then it doesn't. Then the phones and the internet shut off in the entire office. I undo what I did, and the phones come back up, but the internet stays down. I try talking to Window Rock again, and he says to try plugging the cable back in. I plug N-2 back in, the phones go down again. I then realize that it says N and not M, and try M-2. The phones come back up, the internet stays down, the printer stays down.

Finally, after re-booting the server (which I now know how to do) and plugging M-1 back in, everything works. So if I'd done it right the first time, there would probably not have been a problem.

My question is this: Why does the N-2 cable exist? It's only function, so far as I can tell, is to cause the phone system to die. There should be no cable that, when plugged in, disconnects all of our phones. Also? What the hell did I do to trip the server in the first place?

*sigh*

*All names besides mine have been changed to protect yadda yadda yadda

My initial guess is that the switch is poorly configured and that a spanning tree loop was created which took out the vlan that the phones are on.

A bridging loop is bad mmm kay.

Lesson learned. I still think it'd be nice if each office could afford an actual IT person, instead of keeping them all cloistered in WR. My managing attorney seriously seems to think that anyone younger than her automatically knows how to do this stuff.