Network heros empowered to solve network challenges
July 2000
Maintenance, Test & Measurement, Calibration
Spescom Measuregraph
The use of a Fluke Lanmeter saved the day for American company, Computerwise, when a hospital refrigerator forming part of an installed system developed a faulty capacitor. Similarly, Wafertech, a Washington-based concern, was able to use a Fluke Lanmeter to confirm a vendor's 'ineptitude'.
Fluke solutions provide network maintenance staff with effective, informed solutions in solving day-to-day network challenges, says Gary Casper, Product Specialist at Spescom MeasureGraph, the sole local distributor of all Fluke products.
"In the case of Computerwise, the client, a hospital, complained that their lab network was periodically running slowly," says Casper. "A Fluke Lanmeter was left on the system to monitor the traffic and began to report a large number of highly intermittent 'ghosts' on the network, occurring in bursts of some seven minutes and then suddenly disappearing."
The source was narrowed down to a particular wiring run and all electrical devices in its vicinity were shut off. One of the first devices to be reactivated was the blood bank refrigerator, which soon began triggering 'ghosts'. A technician discovered that the start capacitor on the unit's motor had been failing and needed to be replaced.
"Without the timely intervention made possible by the Fluke Lanmeter, the customer would have complained about a slow network, the capacitor would have failed and the ghosts would have disappeared," says Casper. "The Lanmeter made Computerwise network technicians look like heroes. It prevented the hospital from being annoyed by a slow network and helped in effecting a timely repair to a problem which would otherwise have been difficult to detect."
In the Wafertech case, the company had two Unix stations on a network which demonstrated intermittent communication problems. The workstation vendor insisted that either faulty cabling or duplicate IP addresses were to blame. A Wafertech network maintenance technician used a Fluke Lanmeter to check that the cables were in order and to determine that there were no duplicate IP addresses. He then used the Fluke Lanmeter to confirm his suspicion that the problem was caused by duplicate MAC addresses on the two workstations. The highly embarrassed vendor promptly changed the system board and the problem was solved.
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