* * * * *

 Yeah, yeah yeah, I know … if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But we're phasing
                             out that equipment …

I only stopped by The Office to pick up a cross-over network cable. Oh, I
thought, I might as well move the wireless connection to the other router
while I'm here. It's not as arbitrary as I make it seem—we're in the process
of phasing out one of our routers and the wireless shot to the building
behind us is one of the last things still on that particular router. I'm also
not in The Office as much as I used to be, so this was a perfect opportunity.
It should only take a few minutes, I thought, as I started running a new
cable …

An hour later and I think I have things back to normal. I had made the
switchover, and it didn't work. After troubleshooting it to the depth of my
knowledge (mainly, clearing ARP (Address Resolution Protocol) tables), I
decided to give a call to R, the guy who actually handles the wireless shots
for us. Turns out, he can't get to some of his equipment. So now we're both
trying to trouble shoot the issue when I decide to put things back.

On the way to a customer's site, I get a call from Smirk, asking if I can
check on a down server. I tell him I can't as I'm on the way to a customer
site to do some work (that required the cross-over cable I mentioned
earlier). Since P wasn't available at the time, Smirk said he'd drive to The
Office to check it out.

An hour later I'm back at The Office for our weekly meeting. I bump into R,
who's headed towards the roof to check the wireless connection. I tell him
I'll be in a meeting but if anything comes up, give me a call. I then bump
into P, who informed me that the server in question was down because the
network cable had worked loose.

Weird.

P and I head over to the meeting and not one minute in the Internet is down.
Down hard enough for us to call Dan, the Network Engineer to investigate.
Then, R calls, saying his equipment was unplugged from the network!

This is getting weirder by the minute. I excuse myself from the meeting and
head over to the Data Center. I meet R there, and sure enough, one of the
network cables leading to the wireless shot had been unplugged. Plug it back
in, and the wireless stuff comes back online. Then Smirk calls; Dan said our
network connection to the Internet was down (small note: we share Internet
connectivity with another company—our Internet providers come in through a
single router, and are then split out to each company; it was this link
between the Internet router and our core router that was down).

Turns out, that network cable was loose.

Gremlins!

We have gremlins in our Data Center!

How else to explain three unplugged network cables?

(Oh, and after everything was plugged back in, I was able to move the
wireless connection to the other router without problem—sigh).


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