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Dead as a Doornail...On a Holiday Weekend!

R

Radiopronouncer

Last night, the Intellinet switch at a station I work for part-time, died. No life signs. I made sure it was plugged into 120 VAC. Nothing.

So, I grabbed a little Cisco/Linksys switch from my office and got some critical things back on the internet. The production department computer, so people can print, send and receive emails, and download files, a control room computer that we use for a Friday night scoreboard show and the EAS box.

So, we can get through the weekend...maybe.

The satellite receivers would not co-operate with the little Cisco/Linksys switch. Every time I put a couple of them on it, everything lost network connectivity. Plus, I only have ports for a couple of them... Only one if I have to put a Barix that looks at an Instreamer with a public IP on it for another program over the weekend.

So, how long will the satellite receivers function without talking to the NOC? We have Cumulus (XDS), Dial-Global (Wegener iPump), United Stations (XDS), Premiere (XDS), two IMG College (XDS), and Westwood One (International Datacasting Max) receivers. I only tried putting the Cumulus and Westwood one receivers on it. They are the most critical.
 
Radiopronouncer said:
Last night, the Intellinet switch at a station I work for part-time, died. No life signs. I made sure it was plugged into 120 VAC. Nothing.

So, I grabbed a little Cisco/Linksys switch from my office and got some critical things back on the internet. The production department computer, so people can print, send and receive emails, and download files, a control room computer that we use for a Friday night scoreboard show and the EAS box.

So, we can get through the weekend...maybe.

The satellite receivers would not co-operate with the little Cisco/Linksys switch. Every time I put a couple of them on it, everything lost network connectivity. Plus, I only have ports for a couple of them... Only one if I have to put a Barix that looks at an Instreamer with a public IP on it for another program over the weekend.

So, how long will the satellite receivers function without talking to the NOC? We have Cumulus (XDS), Dial-Global (Wegener iPump), United Stations (XDS), Premiere (XDS), two IMG College (XDS), and Westwood One (International Datacasting Max) receivers. I only tried putting the Cumulus and Westwood one receivers on it. They are the most critical.
Click to expand...

All the receivers should continue to work regardless of the internet connection. The NOC may contact you about not being able to connect with the receiver via internet, but none of them should shut down.

RFB
 
The satellites will work just fine. They will show an internet alarm, nothing else. And if something happens with them and you need the provider to 'get in'... They won't be able to do that.

I have been in your shoes. I ran them for 4 days before everything was back to normal. I had one that had a problem. I put it on the net long enough for them to fix it and took it back off.

You could put a little router on the sat recievers and do qos, giving them about 256k bidirectional to share. They all work fine that way.
 
Do any of these set up sub nets that are not 255.255.255.0 (or whatever is that dang default subnet number)?

I had to put in a 24 channel netgear switch hub on a new $30 million press one Sunday morning at 2:30 AM maybe ayear ago,
and most of the press and services came back but for a few that had been programmed into the original box as special subnets.
 
Thanks, everyone! It just so happens that the computer store that we get our computers from is open today. They sent a tech out this morning. The station is the proud owner of a brand new switch. All of the equipment is happy. I am happy. :) Now, for the holiday weekend!
 
Radiopronouncer said:
Thanks, everyone! It just so happens that the computer store that we get our computers from is open today. They sent a tech out this morning. The station is the proud owner of a brand new switch. All of the equipment is happy. I am happy. :) Now, for the holiday weekend!
Click to expand...

Your problem with the network losing connectivity was likely due to an ip address conflict when you added the devices that shut down the system. Take the time to document the configurations so that next time you can manually set the addresses and net masks if needed.

Having two or more devices trying to access the net using the same addresses wreaks havoc every time.
 
We use different IP Groups at my place for all this stuff.

.0.1 is house
.1.1 is automation and programming
.7.1 is streaming & engineering functions (sat receivers, etc).

They are all on their own routers (identical and good for redundancy) and all on a separate internet connection. Buy a bunch of WRT54-GL's and put DD-WRT on them. I have never had one fail, but I have spares if they do.

It is very easy to patch anything over to the other network in an emergency.
 
I just filled out a vacation request for the day before Thanksgiving, the day of, and the day after.

I expect I will get a frantic call or two while enjoying the holiday out of town, it looks like the
factory is going to keep running right on through.

Also very likely that as a result of running when they "shouldn't" be, there will be a mash-up of a press crew that is
whoever they could get to work, not a regular crew that works all on the the same press together.

Business now no longer even wants to pay for and be responsible for the equpment that pemits them to
eliminate so many people in service to money above all.

I think it's justice when the entropy bill comes due.

When it's 2:30 AM on a Sat night/Sun Morn of a holdiay weekend, neglected equipment and
situations often decide they need to relax and have a little break, too.

The situation itself already "knows" intelligently, which items are essential yet without backup.
Like horses, they also seem to "know" when the operator isn't the regular person or an experienced person and it simply will not "behave".
 
It wasn't a wall wart power supply. This is one of those rack-mounted things with 24 ports and an internal power supply.

The satellite receivers looked like they were on DHCP and still locked things up. I thinkI remember the Westwood One receiver being guilty of doing this one time in the past. In any event, they are all on the network now, with static addresses. Oh! Wait a minute! I'm not sure I ever changed that one to DHCP! That is probably it.

We have another network for automation that is physically isolated from the internet, so it didn't affect automation. The automation system is on a hub that is really, really, old
 
I too subnet the building:

192.168.88.x
.77.x
.66.x
etc

Each subnet comprises a group of computers (automation, office, encoder, VOIP, etc). I then set up firewall rules so that each group is "invisible" to the others.

We use the Mikrotik routers, which I highly suggest. They are enterprise, Cisco-like routers at consumer prices.

As I mentioned in another post, I've had a Mikrotik router operating 24/7/365 since August 2009 (yes, over two years). It hasn't slowed, hung, or skipped a beat since day one. I highly recommend Mikrotik for any commercial application.
 
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