GX-270's that drop off the network

Question

In the past two weeks I have gained about 10 SX-270's that are dropping off the network. What happens is our Cisco switches detect a thing called flap. Basically if the link drops/comes back so many times in so many seconds the switch disables that port. Course once the switch disables the port that computer is now totally off the network until we go on and re-enable it.   I had Dell on-site today to replace two of the motherboards but I am not too sure that this has cleared the problem.   Any one have anything like this happening to them ?

dedris · Answer

Thanks for responding. We have many gx270s, but the only ones that are having network issues are the ones that are attached to Catalyst 3550 switches. We have also had a number of power supplies fail on gx270s, I have suspected that it could be a power supply issue causing to many up/down's and causing the switch to err-disable but I have yet to confirm this. I'm going to swap out a power supply to test this theory.

Thanks,
DDE

dedris · Answer

We're having the exact same issue. Did replacing the motherboard fix the problem? -DDE

lunarcom · Answer

No. It did seem it did for a few days but then they started doing it again.

What further testing has found is that our Cisco switches have a feature called "flap detection" that if the link light changes state 5 times in 10 seconds the port gets disabled. On a normal GX-270 as it boots up the light will change 2 times.

What I am suspecting now is that it isn't the motherboard at all but rather the power supply as this flap problem even happens when we add a NIC card to the computer. I have replaced one such power supply in the past few days and monitoring the situation and waiting to hear back from the user.

dedris · Answer

We had two machines that were regularly dropping off the network. We would have to re-enable their ports on the switch each time. I swapped their power supplies from some older optiplex computers that were being surplused. Well, no more problems. I'm not sure how you could prove the power supplies are bad, but it would seem that they are the cause.

-DDE

Networking, Internet, & Bluetooth

GX-270's that drop off the network

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