LAN cables

[stevo1210]

Hello Everyone,

This topic has been a big debate amongst me and a few people.

Is it OK to plug in LAN cables with the PC and network devices ON?

Personally, I switch off my PC before unplugging or plugging in any cables, but other people have good points too.... LAN cables have 8 different contacts which cannot short each other so they think it's OK to plug in ethernet cables with the PC on.

I want to know if anyone has tried to plug LAN cables in with the PC on?? and is it OK to do that or not??

I'm getting tired of shutting down my PC everytime I have to change connection....


Thanks.

[Maxxarcade]

Re: LAN cables

Hell I do that all the time, along with serial and parallel cables, and sometimes fans, if they don't use too much current.

[Topcat]

Re: LAN cables

Yes, it's fine to do. Hell, I've hotswapped BIOS chips and other various things with the systems powered up. Won't harm anything.

[willawake]

Re: LAN cables

i never had any probs doing that.

I'm getting tired of shutting down my PC everytime I have to change connection....

why do you need to change connection?

[stevo1210]

Re: LAN cables

why do you need to change connection?

Hello willawake,

I have to change connection because my router is full and has no redundant LAN ports, so I have 3 PCs sharing the one cable. I have to go and buy a new router soon. This time i'll probably buy a Linksys or D-link router.... I'm currently using a generic Skymaster 10/100 network switch that's falling apart after being dropped a few times by other people.

*Now to something off topic*

It seems to me that when I lend people computer equipment, the equipment never comes back in one piece.... At one point of time I've even had 3 motherboards blown up by the same person in the one day.... If I was to make a list of broken PC equipment, it would be quite long.



Well, at least I know hot swapping LAN cables should be OK.



Thanks.

[Topcat]

Re: LAN cables

If I was to make a list of broken PC equipment, it would be quite long.

LOL...
You should see my junk shelves.....

[starfury1]

Re: LAN cables

I haven't had a problem doing it live
although I think its mostly recommended not to ...think every body does anyway
(maybe on some of the really older stuff you may have stood a change of killing things)

just may take a little time for the network to sort it

I have 3 linky's here no dramas with them...with time I think the caps tend to go thought, powered 24/7...but that could be said about anything thats powered 24/7

the off topic

After the first one mate I would been trying to find out how they stuffed that before giving em a second one...but thats me. (sometimes it just simpler to do it for them)

part of the reason I don't like lending stuff......the other part is if it comes back at all (without having to feel like your hassling them for it.)

I still do lend stuff but sometimes its better just to cut you losses and give it to them if you really have no need of it

Cheers

[Per Hansson]

Re: LAN cables

If it makes you feel better you can always disable the connection, this will most likley (if the card and your PC isn't older than 5 years) poweroff the NIC...

I just plug em in and out without caring, never damaged one this way...

[Paul S]

Re: LAN cables

You can buy a switch, and add it to the router. I can get a 5 port switch for $30 here in the USA. Of course it will take one of the ports from your router, better get an 8 port switch.

Note: The switch does not have to be next to the router. Just put it in the room with the three PCs.

[willawake]

Re: LAN cables

you can probably pick up a secondhand enterprise switch for fuckall. heres one

[Spacedye69]

Re: LAN cables

I have a second hand enterprise switch for cheap. I would even make sure BOTH fans work! Lord knows what it would cost to ship.

Yea, not a problem to hotswap lan cables.

[pentium]

Re: LAN cables

I always unplug and reconnect network cables when a system is on.
I do it with scsi drives too sometimes.

[kc8adu]

Re: LAN cables

I always unplug and reconnect network cables when a system is on.
I do it with scsi drives too sometimes.

scsi stuff is designed for hot plugging .

[kc8adu]

Re: LAN cables

you can probably pick up a secondhand enterprise switch for fuckall. heres one

or if you really want to go overboard i have a cabletron/enterasys 6000 with 3 24 port cards and dual redundant psu's.
it would have to go ups hundredweight!

[pentium]

Re: LAN cables

Too small for me.
Next time I see it, I'm getting a massive IBM 96 port (4 X 24 port boxes and one control box) Cat 5e rack panel just for kicks. It has passed through one second hand store at least twice now so it should come around again.

[kc8adu]

Re: LAN cables

i lied
it has 5 24 port cards!

[Shroomie]

Re: LAN cables

My personal (read: the most, in theory, I'd have in it would be six or seven computers, usually three) switch is a 100 Mbit 24 port Asante NetStacker II. Got it for free from a buddy of mine whose father works at a large company - they get rid of old stuff all the time, and for some reason, this was old enough.

Their waste, my gain.

And kc8adu, that thing's huge!

[willawake]

Re: LAN cables

I have at home Zyxel GS-1008 8 port gigabit which is very nice although has crap caps. Then in the office the cisco 2950t with 24 10/100 and 2 gigabit (nichicon caps). I have several intel inbusiness 8 port around the place (psu dies) and several 3com officeconnect 8 port (psu good, recapping needed after a while).

[archae86]

Re: LAN cables

Well, let me climb up the soap box and speak out of both sides of my mouth.

Side 1:
Hot connection is bad, and failure to take antistatic precautions is bad. I was a reliability guy for a very, very big semiconductor manufacturer for four years, and got to see many, many pictures of destroyed chips which died to both static discharge and other sorts of electrical events relating to end use--not our manufacture.

It was not my personal job, but the guys who had to try to persuade assembly operations to take better antistatic precautions continually faced the "jaywalker's defence".

I walked across the street yesterday with neither light nor crosswalk, and nobody got hurt, so obviously there is no risk.

The fallacy for jaywalking is obvious, I hope that for hot connection and antistatic precautions you recognize that one person not having yet noticed themselves killing a device is pretty poor proof of the safety of violating recommended procedure.

Hot connection is a funny thing--time-varying signals on the lines, and random non-conductive particles on the connections, assure that no two trials are identical. In ye olde semiconductor fab, we could go through dozens of power interruptions, and still lose a piece of equipment on the next, as the slight differences of the latest event sneaked through the UPS and other protections. You may not have thought of them this way, but power failures are sort of the ultimate hot connection to power of many, many devices.

So, I avoid hot connection, and take (slight) antistatic precautions whenever I reasonably can.

Side 2:
100 Base-T LAN connections are hot-connected by everybody and his dog (full disclosure: that includes me). In many industrial IT configurations it would be wildly impractical to avoid it. While I don't know the specs, I'd bet money that the manufacturers figured out long ago how to make them very robust against hot connection--and know that they'll lose out to their competition big time if they ever get it wrong in an appreciable way.

So if you are going to pick something to hot-connect, try to make it something that is designed to tolerate it, where lots and lots of folks have no reasonable alternative to doing it, and where there is a least a decent chance they'd notice if they were wrecking things.

soapbox stowed.

[gdement]

Re: LAN cables

I never even considered that ethernet wasn't designed for hotplugging. It just seems like a very obvious thing that it should be able to do. I refuse to stop hotplugging ethernet, and if my equipment ever dies because of it then I'll blame the manufacturer, whether they like it or not.

The only things I've ruined by hotplugging were the PS/2 keyboard port on a Proliant 800, and the joystick port on a Sound Blaster Pro. I never realized you weren't supposed to hotplug joysticks (seems pretty stupid to me), but the keyboard thing was just me being lazy. I got away with the keyboard about 10 times before it fried, and the joystick I probably swapped closer to 100. The burned trace is obvious on the sound card, I could probably fix it sometime.

The Proliant didn't have a fuse that I could find anywhere, so I had to wait for a replacement board to show up on ebay.

ATX keyboard ports typically have a metal tab attached to them which wraps around the PS/2 connector when it's plugged in. It almost seems like it's designed to prevent you from tilting the connector in a particular direction while removing it. I wonder if that tab is designed to minimize the risk of frying the port?