How can I find which router port is connected to a specific wall data port?

Question

I work at a school and one of the data ports in our classroom is not working. Our IT staff told me that the port on the router that was connected to the data port must be bad so I needed to plug the cable into another port on the router, but I don't know which router port is connected to that specific data port. All of the data ports in the school are connected to this router, so there are tons of cables! The router's indication lights above the ports are all flashing green, so there is no visual indictation of problems. Please help!

Answer 1

The easier way to do that would be to get a toner.

You hook up toner to the end at the computer then use the wand at the router till you find the exact cable. Some directions on the toner when you get it will help understand better.

Answer 2

You can do one of several things:



In any case you MUST have access to the switch room (comm room or 'hub room')



The first thing is to note the DROP number on the wall next to the jack (drop) you want to find. Then go into the hub room and look for a corresponding number, letter, or number-letter combination. There should be a patch cable from that drop to the network switch or router port.



More than likely, it's not 'one router'. It is a network switch and THEN all the switches connect back to central core switch or router.



You would need specific tools though. One is called a "Fox and Hound". The idea is that you plug a device into the data port in the classroom that send a warbling tone on to the cable.



In the hub closet, you take the 'sniffer', and run it along the patch panel or wire bundles until you get hear that loud warbling sound. You have found the cable or drop.



9 times out of 10, a bad 'physical layer' (Network Layer 1) connection is a BAD patch cable in the classroom or in the hubroom from the drop to the switch (router).



It is possible the port is in a SHUTDOWN status on the switch as well. Network port security could be activated to shut down a port if it does not see an allowed MAC address connected to that port in the classroom (that is to prevent students or other individuals from bringing in personally owned, unchecked equipment and attaching it to the LAN and causing problems or hacking).



Router ports generally do NOT go bad (VERY infrequently).



If you do not know networking keep your hands out of this as you will only make things worse, but I'll continue to tell you the troubleshooting steps...



The things to troubleshoot this is:



Take a known good computer and patch it to the drop in the classroom. Do you get a connect light? If not, then replace the PATCH cable with a KNOWN GOOD patch cable. Still no connect light? Then go to the hub room. You MUST know which drop the classroom wall drop connects to in the hub room patch panel (either by label or by fox and hound). Find that and see that it IS connected to a a switch port or router switch. If it is, and no light, then REPLACE the patch cable in the hub room with a known good patch cable. If still NO light, then MOVE the cable END that is plugged into the router or switch port to an UNUSED port (one that has no cable in it, there should be several). If you get a a connect light, then the port is probably shut down and a the network people need to check the configuration or status of that switch or router. If it still does not CONNECT after you move the cable, then there is a good chance that the cable has been cut or otherwise disabled someplace in the wall or ceiling. Many times workers can yank, pull or cut a cable and do not know it.



Another device you can use to test the wall cabling would be a time-delay reflectometer (TDF), and that function is built into may network testing and troubleshooting tools (Fluke "NeetTool", Optiview Protocol Analyzer, etc). Plug the tester into the classroom drop and hit TEST. Generally if there is no WIRING issue, the tester will indicate something like all good wiring to the switch at 100' and it will show you the transmit and receive pairs... if there is an open someplace (broken wire or punch down wiring) it will tell you which wire is open. You can also get more specific if you put a loopback connector on the end of the wire in the hub room and then run a test...the TDF sends a signal down the wire and if there is a break, it will reflect back to the device and it sees and calculates the distance to the break. Very accurate.

Answer 3

Your IT staff just fooled you. The data ports are logical ports and has nothing to do with switch. If the port on switch is bad then you won't be having any connection to the network. It is possible that the switch is programmable and they blocked some logical ports on a physical port where you connect your computer. Ask them if thats the case then unblock the logical ports. Good luck!

Answer 4

Port forwarding is administered by applying the Router instead of a working laptop or pc, so this is not going to circulate with you lower back living house, yet you are able to disable it by applying a click of a button once you will possibly be able to desire to. to describe it a splash, port forwarding makes it so any site visitors coming in from "exterior" your community (cyber web / ISP), with a trip spot port which you special, to circulate to the specified "inner" IP handle (on your place), being your gadget. So quite if permit's say you're setting up a Minecraft server, in case you enable port forwarding for the Minecraft Server's port (which purely that software makes use of) meaning if somebody tries to connect with :25565 then this is going to continuously be directed on your pc. If this is only Minecraft then this is particularly ok, I recommend in case you overwrote yet another port forward rule that he already had in place for his very own server then that should screw issues up (wherein case you will possibly only replace your port to something else then forward that), besides the undeniable fact that if this is something fairly accepted like say port 80 (that's HTTP), then that routes exceedingly lots each and every cyber web-based site visitors to one gadget which might quite screw issues up. So quite, in case you're port forwarding non properly-prevalent ports (that are >1024) this is positive yet once you're forwarding properly-prevalent ports (<1024) then you could be careful. :)

Answer 5

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