Flickering

The rain had clearly set in for most of the day. Squally winds made it look quite unpleasant outside and the Gorse Fox had to retrieve the garden chairs a couple of times after they had been thrown across the garden. It was a day to stay put.

Ellie had a long sleep in the morning. This gave the Gorse Fox some time in the study. He was confused. The flickering lights of the network switch were showing 100Mbps and 1000Mbps links with the yellow or green indicators. The NAS devices were showing 1000 as was the Mac, but when the Gorse Fox looked at the network details reported by the router, it said the Mac was only 100. What was going on? He started his diagnosis at the switch and went through checking each connection. Sure enough there was one missing. The Gorse Fox had forgotten to reconnect the "uplink" that connects the network switch for the study segment to the rest off the network. That was soon remedied and everything went back to normal.

The question that arose then was "How on earth had the Mac been talking to the web?" The Gorse Fox had a long think and examined the possibilities. The Mac's WiFi? No - not switched on. Magic? possibly the most likely solution. In the end he concluded that one of the Raspberry Pis was acting as bridge between the isolated LAN segment in the study and the house WiFi and as they only run at 100, this explained how the Mac was being reported as connected at 100. Everything is back to normal now, but it was an interesting hour or two.

Urban-Cub's shift finished soon after lunch and she collected Ellie mid afternoon. She's with the child minder for the next couple of days and we will look after her again later in the week