Misc. Ramblings

First, the good news. I posted recently about the change to new network cabling which is part of our switch from IBM Token-Ring to Ethernet. What we had was old CAT-3 wires that can't operate at the higher speeds found on Fast Ethernet so out they went.

Now that we have switched over (no pun intended), you can see the results below:

That's a shot from Broadband Reports indicating I got about 6.8Mbps down and 3.0 up. Whoooo and Hooooo. Before the switch over I was getting about 1.5Mbps up and down. Well done to our IT guys!

Now the bad news. Many (all?) of our Windows servers were setup to be accessed via the NetBEUI protocol. Said protocol was pretty snazzy in 1985 for use with Windows for Workgroups. But in 2004, Windows XP doesn't even support it. If you have XP and you need NetBEUI, you can find it on your install CD (see MS KB Article 301041 for installation instructions) so all is not lost.

Or, it is? NetBEUI is non-routable (except in a token-ring environment) and will not cross subnets. The Ethernet side of our network is, I think, segmented and on a different subnet. So, as far as I know, I can't get there from here using NetBEUI.

That doesn't mean I can't get there at all but it does mean it's not as user friendly. With NetBEUI I could browse the list of Windows servers (and there are a lot of them here) and mouse click on the one I needed. Now, I have to use the keyboard and type in the specific server and share I need in the form of \\server\share.

Now the worse news. Even if I do that, what happens seems to be randomly assigned. Sometimes I get a login, which is what should happen. Sometimes I don't get a login but do reach the server. Unfortunately, since I'm not logged in, I don't have the rights to see or do anything on the server. And finally, sometimes I don't have to login but I do have access to all the files.

Fortunately, I don't need to get to that server, which is our Intraweb site, often since I only need it when I update the site. But if things get busy again as far as adding things to the site I'll be in a heap of hurt ("But boss! It's not by fault! It's Netbeeeuuuuiiii!"[insert sound effect of footsteps echoing down a long, dark hall and a scraping sound that can only come from a body being dragged away]).

Oh well, I do have to congratulate our IT people for getting the Ethernet side going and thank all four IT people who came by yesterday morning to try to fix things re: server access.