Switch failure puzzle

chudak

Hello all and Happy Holidays !

I have two LANs connected to different interfaces on my pfSense router.

Several weeks ago one of my switches failed after 3 years in service.
Second switch works without any problems.

The failure was that it started stopping any routing (all lights green no blinking) and had to be power off and on in order to start normal operations. It happened ones and then started happening every day so I had to replace it with the same new switch (Netgear 16 ports Gigabit Unmanaged Switch(GS316))

And the problem was gone, until yesterday. Yesterday it happened again !

This made me thinking that maybe it's not a h/w failure but something on my network that can cause the switch to start behaving in such an odd fashion.

I have no clue even where to start looking
And hoping that someone here had similar experience and can point me to the right direction on how to troubleshoot it.

(Worst case scenario I will buy a new switch by other manufacture, but wondering in how to find a root cause)

Thx

netblues

@chudak There isn;t much you can do with an unmanaged switch.
Make sure you don't have loops, ie cable plugged in two ports of the same switch. somehow.
Apart from that, smells like a hardware failure

chudak

@netblues said in Switch failure puzzle:

@chudak There isn;t much you can do with an unmanaged switch.
Make sure you don't have loops, ie cable plugged in two ports of the same switch. somehow.
Apart from that, smells like a hardware failure

Thx for the reply !

Do you think it’s likely h/w failure on two switches?! Very odd...

You mentioned unmanaged switch
Would you recommend replacing it with a managed switch ? What would be a difference if it were a managed one ?

stephenw10

If it was managed you might have some logged error to go on.

Also managed switches tend to be better made and more resilient. Mostly!

If a new replacement failed in exactly the same way though I would start suspecting something in environment. Not necessarily a network problem, maybe a power issue? You swapped the PSU at the same time I assume?

If you move one of those 'bad' switches to somewhere else and test it does it still fail?

Steve