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After five years I discovered why my network goes down (2020)

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Re: After five years I discovered why my network goes down (2020)

#2
Why would a MAC address duplication "lock up" your whole network? I would guess that at worst that particular laptop would either intermittently get packets or not get packets at all. Which is bad, but not a "lock up". Other stuff should still work.

Re: After five years I discovered why my network goes down (2020)

#4
I used to have a dell vostro notebook that every time I logged into the network with windows, it would drop every other device on the wifi. Funny thing, is that if I used linux, the router would be alright and not collapse.

Never found out the reason. In the end I divorced the wife and she got that notebook.

Wifi is weird.

Re: After five years I discovered why my network goes down (2020)

#5

Why would a MAC address duplication "lock up" your whole network? I would guess that at worst that particular laptop would either intermittently get packets or not get packets at all. Which is bad, but not a "lock up". Other stuff should still work.

It shouldn't but I've seen and had some dell docks corrupt arp tables on my switches

Re: After five years I discovered why my network goes down (2020)

#7

Why would a MAC address duplication "lock up" your whole network? I would guess that at worst that particular laptop would either intermittently get packets or not get packets at all. Which is bad, but not a "lock up". Other stuff should still work.

Things like that can cause routing "loops" in your network which can mess up everything, not just the device in question. We've had that issue with "dumb" switches.

Re: After five years I discovered why my network goes down (2020)

#8

Why would a MAC address duplication "lock up" your whole network? I would guess that at worst that particular laptop would either intermittently get packets or not get packets at all. Which is bad, but not a "lock up". Other stuff should still work.

It shouldn't but I've seen and had some dell docks corrupt arp tables on my switches

Now that, although ugly and wrong, makes sense.

Re: After five years I discovered why my network goes down (2020)

#9

Why would a MAC address duplication "lock up" your whole network? I would guess that at worst that particular laptop would either intermittently get packets or not get packets at all. Which is bad, but not a "lock up". Other stuff should still work.

I agree with your assessment. A duplicate MAC address could cause a problem for one device, but it shouldn't have caused a full network outage.

Simply opening WireShark for a few minutes might have helped the poster identify their problem faster. Maybe you would observe the same frame transmitting again and again, maybe you would see corrupted frames, or maybe nothing at all.

Re: After five years I discovered why my network goes down (2020)

#10
post #4

I used to have a dell vostro notebook that every time I logged into the network with windows, it would drop every other device on the wifi. Funny thing, is that if I used linux, the router would be alright and not collapse. Never found out the reason. In the end I divorced the wife and she got that notebook. Wifi is weird.

That seems like a pretty extreme solution to that problem.
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