Where was this network repair service call: Ashland & Roosevelt, South Chicago.

Basically the intermittent network problems were affecting the productivity in the company for two weeks. A $60,000 network printer was printing one moment, but giving timeouts the other moment.

I discovered two problems and fixed them:

1. The RJ45 plugs were badly made and not making good contact. Any professional network technician could have seen and solved that.

1. The second problem was a little bit trickier. The printer had the address 192.168.0.8, assigned statically from the its control panel. The router was assigning IP(Internet Protocol) addresses dynamically by DHCP to the other computers. Sometimes, not always, the router would assign the IP 192.168.0.8 (the printer’s address) to one of the network computers. Solution: moved the printer’s IP address to a arbitrarily chosen higher address.

Another problem was that the cat5 cable was running parallel to the power lines. Solution scheduled for later: replacing the unshielded UTP cable with shielded FTP cable, more suitable for the industrial environments, and running it at a 3 feet distance from the power lines.