Same switch, different location

A friend called me a few days ago and told me about a problem where he works. The company was combining their two office locations into one in order to save money. It was a good idea anyway because the two locations were only a block apart. They (friend’s employer) had hired some contractors to install 15 new network drops. When the contractors finished connecting the new drops to the shiny new Linksys SD216 16-port switch, the computer and printer moves began.

Quick background: The CEO of this company is tight with money. They have 15 workstations (old PIII systems), 1 server (newer P4 system) and 5 laser printers so they have no need for an IT department. An IT support contract? HA! Those cost too much. They would just call someone (read: cheapest price) if the needed help.

Now that everything was moved and set up, they were having a problem with one of the printers. No one could print to it. My friend said it worked fine at the other location and the CEO was ready to dock someones pay for “destroying a perfectly good printer”. That’s why my friend called in a favor* and asked me to look at it.

The first thing I did was print out the config sheet for the printer. When I did that, I saw that the IP address was set to 192.168.11.114. I asked my friend what IP range was the office network using and he wasn’t sure so we looked on his workstation. His workstation was set to 192.168.10.90. Aha! I told my friend that the printer IP was set up incorrectly and that it needs to be set to a free IP on the 192.168.10 network.

My friend told the CEO, who was watching nearby, about the easy fix. “Impossible!” I heard. “One of my neighbors is an IT guru and he said the printer was damaged in the move. He even checked the connection and said that it should work because it’s on the same switch as all the other computers.” I told the CEO that I would bet lunch on the fix. The winner would choose the restaurant. He liked that idea and said, “I hope you’ve saved up a couple of months salary because I don’t eat cheap.”

Long story short: I reset the printer so that it would pull a DHCP address, set my friend’s workstation to print to the printer by creating a new TCP/IP port using the printer name and ate the best free (for me) lunch ever. Sweet, sweet victory.

*Be careful when you tell a friend “I owe you one”. This is one of the rare times it actually worked out for me.

The manner of giving is worth more than the gift. – Pierre Corneille

09.May.08 Networking

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One Response to “Same switch, different location”

Scott | December 9th, 2008 at 12:43 am
I LOVE those free lunches. If it weren’t for those “IT guru’s” strolling around barking about how smart they are, there would be less glory in this job to be sure.
I’ve been in the same situation. Someone bets the farm on information that is completely wrong. All you want to do is fix the issue and get out of there. But then they throw the “friend, neighbour, brother IT Guru” gauntlet down and then the game is on.

Reboot,
…free lunch.