Sometimes you have those network outages that stay with you forever.
For example, a customer of ours called with puzzling problems. It’s a company with 12 staff, so it’s important that the IT is running well, and everyone can keep working nicely.
Mapping the network failure
The problem was as follows: employees could print but could not access their programs and files. Communicating with each other via mail did not work, nor did the Internet. Getting down to daily work was out of the question. So panic! Of course it was imperative that the cause of the failure be found quickly. And most importantly, solved so everyone could get back to work!
Because we built the network at this customer’s site ourselves, we knew exactly how it works. And we could watch from a distance. We knew where to start and together with the client we did several tests. If you do this, will it work? If you swap that cable with that one, what happens? And do we get one step further if we change this setting? Thus, we mapped the complete failure.
Remote Investigations
We soon discovered that we could connect to the servers remotely, but not to the printers. From the outside, the very things that worked internally at the customer did not! And vice versa. What worked at the customer’s place did not work remotely. Like printing. The origin of the problem began to become increasingly clear to us.
A suddenly broken cable
Within a short time, we knew that a basic network cable was not working. How could that be? This cable never faltered and always worked fine.
We knew where this cable was within the company and asked the customer to go take a look. Was the cable still in good condition? Or was it broken sometimes!
How can that be?
Do you have any idea how it could be that the cable suddenly stopped working?
Sometimes you have those jobs that stay with you forever, and this is one of them. You may take one more gamble. Well!
It was a mouse!!! A mouse had gnawed on the cable, crippled the business and made for a great story. Fortunately, we were able to replace the cable quickly. But the mouse also had to be caught. All employees were able to return to work. With their feet on a stool ?
