J
Jan Wilmans (ThermoFisher)
I work @thermofisher at the Eindhoven/Acht location in the Netherlands.
Since the beginning of Juli 2018, I have experienced a problem with intermittently dropping network connections.
I notice this because applications start saying there is no network and windows reports the 'network issue' icon in the tray-icon area.
The problem seems to be broader then just network problems, because applications like version control software and explorer become unresponsive ('not responding'). Also trying to disable the network adaptor locks up that dialog window.
I tried a continuous ping to local servers that continue to work fine from other PC's, and ping replies start timing out of large periods (minutes) and come back after an defined period, mostly within a minute. The applications do not start responding when that happens.
First I thought it was a network card issue, a cable or a switch issue. (even thought that should not cause problem to become unresponsive)
After talking to IT, we tried:
- re-pushing policies
- a DNS flush / renew
- reboots of all hardware involved
- disabling firewalls (windows) and anti-virus software (symantec)
- installing drivers
After that my problem still reproduced on (the problem seems completely unaffected):
- other outlets
- other network cards, including Wifi, fixed LAN, internal network card, USB v2.0 to ethernet stick and two different docking stations, one of which was an USB-C based solution.
- several other workstations, some of them laptops, some regular PCs (all Dell)
Since mine was a laptop and it had a Dell service contract, we tried to rule out more hardware and Dell replaced the motherboard + the network card.
I should mention at this point that the laptop worked fine for months before ~juli 2018. And that we recently had a domain migration, from the FEI domain to the ThermoFisher domain (FEI was acquired by ThermoFisher ~two years ago)
I have no way to tell if this in any way related to the problem, but the migration was ongoing when the problem started.
So after all this was ruled out, we basically had no other options (that I'm aware of) then re-imaging the primary harddisk and re-installing all software.
summarizing:
- we have several workstations including laptops and non-laptops that have the problem
- re-imaging seems to solve the problem
My problem:
- re-imaging is a really nasty process, these workstations are developer PC's and require lots of software to be re-installed and configured.
- we have no way to know the problem will not re-surface, because we did not find the root-cause.
My question:
- is there any way to analyse the problem in more detail?
I'm personally a software architect and I have worked closely with IT to work on the analysis, but frankly, I'm at a loss.
Best regards,
Jan Wilmans
Reference:
View: https://twitter.com/janwilmans/status/1035294617346789376
Continue reading...
Since the beginning of Juli 2018, I have experienced a problem with intermittently dropping network connections.
I notice this because applications start saying there is no network and windows reports the 'network issue' icon in the tray-icon area.
The problem seems to be broader then just network problems, because applications like version control software and explorer become unresponsive ('not responding'). Also trying to disable the network adaptor locks up that dialog window.
I tried a continuous ping to local servers that continue to work fine from other PC's, and ping replies start timing out of large periods (minutes) and come back after an defined period, mostly within a minute. The applications do not start responding when that happens.
First I thought it was a network card issue, a cable or a switch issue. (even thought that should not cause problem to become unresponsive)
After talking to IT, we tried:
- re-pushing policies
- a DNS flush / renew
- reboots of all hardware involved
- disabling firewalls (windows) and anti-virus software (symantec)
- installing drivers
After that my problem still reproduced on (the problem seems completely unaffected):
- other outlets
- other network cards, including Wifi, fixed LAN, internal network card, USB v2.0 to ethernet stick and two different docking stations, one of which was an USB-C based solution.
- several other workstations, some of them laptops, some regular PCs (all Dell)
Since mine was a laptop and it had a Dell service contract, we tried to rule out more hardware and Dell replaced the motherboard + the network card.
I should mention at this point that the laptop worked fine for months before ~juli 2018. And that we recently had a domain migration, from the FEI domain to the ThermoFisher domain (FEI was acquired by ThermoFisher ~two years ago)
I have no way to tell if this in any way related to the problem, but the migration was ongoing when the problem started.
So after all this was ruled out, we basically had no other options (that I'm aware of) then re-imaging the primary harddisk and re-installing all software.
summarizing:
- we have several workstations including laptops and non-laptops that have the problem
- re-imaging seems to solve the problem
My problem:
- re-imaging is a really nasty process, these workstations are developer PC's and require lots of software to be re-installed and configured.
- we have no way to know the problem will not re-surface, because we did not find the root-cause.
My question:
- is there any way to analyse the problem in more detail?
I'm personally a software architect and I have worked closely with IT to work on the analysis, but frankly, I'm at a loss.
Best regards,
Jan Wilmans
Reference:
View: https://twitter.com/janwilmans/status/1035294617346789376
Continue reading...