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I have a network of about 15 PC's set up to a switch which is connected to our modem obviously. For some reason, very randomly, while trying to load a webpage (any webpage, not specific) the network will freeze is seems - nobody ever loses a connection but often get the 'page cannot be displayed' message, then 30 seconds - 1 minute later everything is working again. It is a 100/10 mbps switch we are using and everything connected to the switch is also connected to the internet although the entire network has this problem.

To my knowledge 'broadcast storms' are not too much of worry anymore so I am confused as to what would be causing this. Could it be a weak / failing switch? After pinging the modem there we absolutely no timeouts of ping spikes which makes me think the problem is with the switch.

Tantrik
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  • What is the switch make/model? Broadcast storms can absolutely still be a problem. – fukawi2 Feb 12 '15 at 00:01
  • `a switch which is connected to our modem obviously` - why would that be obvious? When you say the network freezes do you mean just internet access or do you mean all communications between hosts connected to the switch as well? – joeqwerty Feb 12 '15 at 03:30

2 Answers2

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Yes, this could definitely be the switch. (Maybe the switch backplane is malfunctioning. Maybe the uplink port. Maybe it's rebooting itself. Can't really say for sure what the problem is, without logs from the switch.) Try replacing it and see what happens.

For what it's worth, even for small networks, I don't like unmanaged switches (which I assume is what you're using here), for precisely this reason. If something goes wrong, or something weird starts happening, really the only way to troubleshoot the network is by replacing the unmanaged switch. (They're also lower quality than managed switches and tend to fail more often, but given that they're cheaper, that seems like a fair trade off to me.)

HopelessN00b
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The computers were still talking to eachother. I replaced the old nasty router with a new one and voila! No more internet problems. Thanks for the help everyone!

Tantrik
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