so this was a new one for me after 30+ years of networking
for the past 3 weeks, my mac pro decided to fall off the network randomly, every 5-45 minutes.
suspected a bad ethernet port, so i switched to the secondary port. no dice.
suspected software weirdness, so i reinstalled adguard and anything that might be hijacking my connection no dice.
suspected a bad ethernet cable, so i swapped that out too. green lights on my pro, and on the switch. no dice.
yesterday I noticed that my doorbell cam had been mysteriously offline for some time - probably weeks. i traced it back to its ethernet cable, which was only partially inserted. the locking tab had snapped off.
oddly enough, i noticed that it neighboured the mac pro's port on the switch.
i replaced the bad doorbell cam cable. suddenly, i've got rock solid ethernet on the pro again. 😖
i assume this means there are electrical relationships between neighbouring ports on this $9 switch, probably to save money. sigh.
@vga256 Talk about a needle in a haystack! I guess that’s a reminder to all of us to isolate when troubleshooting, but still, who’d have imagined that.
@vga256 Also a non-zero chance of a 'logical' relationship and a silicon or firmware bug. At a guess the cam is fast ethernet, full duplex. A bad physical connection can have the PHY in the switch flipping kittens trying to autonegotiate something stable. If it gets as far as 10bT-half it can get a bit sketch as "nothing runs at that rate and mode!" so it too often doesn't get interop testing before the product is farted out the door.
@vga256 that reminds me of my ISP's equipment and I trust none of it. They are bottom of the barell. I've seen thing similar like you mentioned, but never got to the bottom of it. Now I disable everything from it and put my Unifi gear in front of it. Problem solved.
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