Well, I've finally recovered enough from Friday to tell you guys about it.
Arrived at work about 10 minutes late Fri. morning. We were watching the news to see if our kids were going to school. During the night, Montgomery was hit pretty hard by a storm, especially the area where the school is. Kids had school, so I headed on in to work.
I plug in the laptop, open a couple of remote console sessions to a couple of servers, when a couple of cubicle mates ask if I was doing something, because they lost network connectivity. I lost connectivity on both my laptop and desktop at the same time. I look at the phone (old PBX system completely isolated from the computer network) and it was dead. Since I am the network and telephone administrator, I immediately go into panic mode.
I literally run to the server room and get on one of the servers. I can ping other servers and any one on the network, except anyone in IT. The way we are currently set up, IT and the servers are on the same switch. If anyone should be able to pin the servers, it should be us!!!
I grab a tone generator and run to my boss' office. Plug into a data jack and chase it back to the patch panel. No tone! I verify my findings with several other jacks, both voice and data. I start noticing a pattern...only jacks with wire on the exterior wall are affected. I assume that the building may have taken a lighting hit on that side which damaged the cables. Boss thought the lighting hit me and argued that he thought the switch went out. However, he didn't have an answer when I asked him how a failed switch would affect our phone system.
In troubleshooting the problem, I failed to mention that I swapped a station module on the phone system, as well as cycling the entire system twice. At my boss' insistence, I did swap the switch that the servers and IT are plugged into. Of course, that didn't fix anything.
He finally decided that I was right and that something was wrong with the wiring. Called building management to see if any other occupants were having problems. We were the only ones.
A few minutes later, he called my supervisor to the floor below us. Seems that our neighbor down under (A MAJOR COMPUTER/TECHNOLOGY WHOLESALER) decided since they were moving out of that space, that they would cut all their network and data connections. They cut 12 cubicles worth of phone and data, along with 1/2 dozen offices.
Here's the real kicker...they are having to pay to have the wiring contractor come in and rewire nearly a 1/4th of our floor. We're moving out in August!!!!
To get us by until the wiring is fixed, my assistant and I scrounged up a couple of switches and made a boatload of patch cables to get the computers going again. I could hack something for the phones, but by the time I could get that working, the wiring will be redone.
I'm scared to think of what I'm going to run into in the morning...so I'm going to bed now to get my rest. I have a feeling I might need it.
Arrived at work about 10 minutes late Fri. morning. We were watching the news to see if our kids were going to school. During the night, Montgomery was hit pretty hard by a storm, especially the area where the school is. Kids had school, so I headed on in to work.
I plug in the laptop, open a couple of remote console sessions to a couple of servers, when a couple of cubicle mates ask if I was doing something, because they lost network connectivity. I lost connectivity on both my laptop and desktop at the same time. I look at the phone (old PBX system completely isolated from the computer network) and it was dead. Since I am the network and telephone administrator, I immediately go into panic mode.
I literally run to the server room and get on one of the servers. I can ping other servers and any one on the network, except anyone in IT. The way we are currently set up, IT and the servers are on the same switch. If anyone should be able to pin the servers, it should be us!!!
I grab a tone generator and run to my boss' office. Plug into a data jack and chase it back to the patch panel. No tone! I verify my findings with several other jacks, both voice and data. I start noticing a pattern...only jacks with wire on the exterior wall are affected. I assume that the building may have taken a lighting hit on that side which damaged the cables. Boss thought the lighting hit me and argued that he thought the switch went out. However, he didn't have an answer when I asked him how a failed switch would affect our phone system.
In troubleshooting the problem, I failed to mention that I swapped a station module on the phone system, as well as cycling the entire system twice. At my boss' insistence, I did swap the switch that the servers and IT are plugged into. Of course, that didn't fix anything.
He finally decided that I was right and that something was wrong with the wiring. Called building management to see if any other occupants were having problems. We were the only ones.
A few minutes later, he called my supervisor to the floor below us. Seems that our neighbor down under (A MAJOR COMPUTER/TECHNOLOGY WHOLESALER) decided since they were moving out of that space, that they would cut all their network and data connections. They cut 12 cubicles worth of phone and data, along with 1/2 dozen offices.
Here's the real kicker...they are having to pay to have the wiring contractor come in and rewire nearly a 1/4th of our floor. We're moving out in August!!!!
To get us by until the wiring is fixed, my assistant and I scrounged up a couple of switches and made a boatload of patch cables to get the computers going again. I could hack something for the phones, but by the time I could get that working, the wiring will be redone.
I'm scared to think of what I'm going to run into in the morning...so I'm going to bed now to get my rest. I have a feeling I might need it.
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