As the network card is popularized all over the world, it has become a bridge between computers and the network. Once the network adapter goes on the fritz, PC users will suffer lots of unaccountable troubles and feel helpless. Here I will list some common network card malfunctions and their solutions:
Network connection
A network card usually has two indicator lights (LED): the green light shows that the card is receiving electricity; the orange (10Mb/s) or red (100 Mb/s) light indicates network activity (sending or receiving data). When a network card is working regularly, its lights are sustained (flickering when transmitting data), but if the lights become too bright or too dark every now and then, furthermore, computer drops online frequently, most possibly this net card and its PCI slot are poorly connected. Different from other PCI devices, if you often plug net card or move computer, the network connection is easily loose because of poor contact. You can fix this glitch by plugging the net card again or changing to another free PCI slot. Moreover, if there is too much dust on the card, the card’s golden finger is severely oxidized, or the network cable connector is broken, the network connection also would be unstable, well then you need to clean the card, wipe the golden finger with some paper or change a connector.
Drivers
Network card is the same as other hardware devices: its imperfect driver may bring about problems. If your card encounters some inexplicable errors, you can download and set up the latest drivers from some professional websites to repair these errors. In case your network adapter’s malfunction happens after you updated driver, you can restore the driver with the driver program that came with your adapter.
Magnetic field problem
Network adapter is easily interrupted by the magnetic field, so you should avoid putting your computer near to the devices like microwave oven, fridge or TV that have a large and strong magnetic field.
Network cables
Poor network cables and connectors would also affect your net card working. In addition to selecting better twisted pair, you should also note that whether the connection between your network adapter port and connector is in good, and whether the order of the data lines in the connector accords with the international 568a and 568b network cables (especially those self-made connectors).
By: Molly Smith
Archive for December, 2009
Troubleshooting Four Common Network Card Problems
December 30th, 2009How to Deal With Dual Network Cards Conflict
December 29th, 2009
Many people now have two computers, as to enable both to access the network, they often make use of the dual network cards to connect their computers and make them as a local area network (or LAN), which would cost much less than purchase a router. However, sometimes due to the model and the quality of these two adapters or your PC compatibility problems, they have a conflict. How can we tackle it?
Using dual NIC cards to access the network is only a temporary plan, if there is some problem when applying the double cards connection, we should consider troubleshooting it from the aspects below:
Computer restart
Generally when you finish installing some software, Windows prompts you to restart; sometimes you think it a troublesome and reboot the computer till all software has been installed. You’d better restart your PC when installing the first net card and then turn to set up the next one. Because when installation is over, the system not only would assign the interrupt request and the memory available resource to you network adapter, but also configure the port and the IP for it, actually it is more convenient for your PC to carry out its work by rebooting and then installing the next adapter.
Net card speed and connections
When you build the network, you should think over the communication problem between the 10/100M and 10M network adapters: when they are interconnected in two computers, you would probably find that they are not reachable across the IP network, or they are shown connected normally but you can not browse the website. Such errors often happen when two net cards with different transmission speeds exchanging their data packs. To resolve this failure, you can try to contact your 10/100M network adapter to the external line and use an adapter with the same speed in the inner connection.
By: Molly Smith
Improving Network Performance – An Overview of Network Availability Design
December 28th, 2009
Today’s companies, particularly those involved with banking and Internet hosting, require their network to be available 99.999% of the time. When the network isn’t available for employees, clients and business partners, the cost can be thousands of dollars per minute. Diversity or failover is a key component of any high availability strategy. It describes a backup device or link that is available should the primary device or link be unavailable.
Today’s e-commerce web hosting facility are designed with diversity for circuits, routers, firewalls, links, modules and servers. Each number shown corresponds to a single point of failure that is provisioned with some backup or diverse connection. Each server is dual homed to different switches should a Layer 2 switch or server link fail. The Layer 2 switches are connected with a Gigabit trunk. As well the Layer 2 switches are connected to multilayer switches with Gigabit trunks. That allows for link or switch failure. There is module diversity at all campus switches with dual supervisor engines. If the primary supervisor engine fails, the secondary activates and traffic is diverted across trunk lines to the adjacent switch once the spanning tree algorithm is run and the trunk ports are in forwarding mode.
Firewall failover is provided with a link between them that will detect if one of those is unavailable. Traffic is then routed through the active firewall. The routers are connected with a link that will detect when one of the devices is unavailable (HSRP). There are separate telecom demarcations at this facility, which provide diverse local loop circuits to different central offices. There are dual WAN circuits to different Internet Service Providers from those central offices as well.
High availability designs must consider the failover time at each point in their network. If a network application will timeout after 10 seconds then any failover point must be 9 seconds or less. For instance, spanning tree protocol (STP) will run when there is a topology change such as a switch or link failure. Design your network such that the link speeds, spanning tree protocol version and switch topology do not add an excessive failover time.
1. Different Internet Service Providers
2. Central Office Diversity with Diverse Local Loop Circuits
3. Router Diversity with Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)
4. Firewall Diversity
5. Switch to Firewall Link Failover with Gigabit Trunking
6. Switch and Link Diversity with Gigabit Trunking
7. Switch and Link Failover with Gigabit Trunking
