You might be surprised.

I had the most unlikely cable problem 've ever encountered last summer.
 Someone's new computer wouldn't receive email.  They could browse,
access the company network fine, etc, but email always locked up the
computer.  It was the same when I tried telnetting to the pop3 server,
but I could telnet to web servers, etc just fine.

I replaced the driver, ran diagnostics on the card, swapped hub ports,
etc.  the problem (much to the amazement of my doubting colleague)
resolved itself when I replaced the cable.

I suspect that it was probably a marginal network interface in the new
computer (on board, davicom I think, but could've been SIS) coupled with
a marginal cable.  I'm still not sure why the email would have been a
problem except that it would create some of the smallest packets the
interface sees, so it could have been having a fit with dropped packets,
rerequesting them etc.

So far not a problem with the new cable, though.  It really defies
explanation...

If I were in his shoes I'd disconnect everything from the hub but one
computer and the server, then bring up each connection one by one with
some testing.  More likely then not it's a hardware issue.

-Adam

Alan B. Pearce wrote:

>He does have the software disc that comes with the network cards, right? My
>memories of dealing with 3Com cards is that there is diagnostic software on
>the disk or CD that will test the card in the machine. One of the tests is a
>loopback test, which does an internal loopback connection within the card so
>that it can test the transmit encoding/receive decoding without going out
>onto the cable.
>
>If that works alright, then change the port on the hub he is connected to.
>If he now works OK then the port on the hub is stuffed, else his network
>card is stuffed. Between those two items you know if it is the hub or
>network card and it cannot be anything else as everyone else works
>correctly.
>
>The likelihood of a wiring problem is small unless someone tripped over a
>cat 5 patch cable and wrecked it, or has been changing the office partitions
>around and put a fastening through the cable.
>
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