Dead USB ports on a laptop - ideas?

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 21 September 2014 08:38:26 Peter Smout did opine
And Gene did reply:
> On 21/09/14 13:16, Colin Law wrote:
> > On 21 September 2014 12:14, Peter Smout <smoutpete at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 21/09/14 11:27, Karl Auer wrote:
> >>> On Sun, 2014-09-21 at 11:12 +0100, Peter Smout wrote:
> >>>>> There are remote USB units out there that make one or more USB
> >>>>> ports available across the network.
> >>>> 
> >>>> You learn something new everyday! I have never heard of or come
> >>>> across these.
> >>> 
> >>> Google for "USB redirector linux" (minus the quotes, of course)
> >>> 
> >>> Regards, K.
> >> 
> >> Thanks Karl, all new knowledge welcome, but for me personally with
> >> my limited bandwidth probably not that great but filed for future
> >> reference ;)
> > 
> > Can you explain what you mean by limited bandwidth?  Bandwidth within
> > your home network is nothing to do with your internet connection, if
> > that is what you are referring to.
> > 
> > Colin
> 
> Hi,
> 
> That is what I was referring to, since my move into the wyldes
> everything I took for granted has slowed down including my home network
> (still using the same d-link router in addition to the "free" one
> provided by the ISP) this I assumed was a symptom of the slow internet
> speeds out here! (Having moved from a fibre optic connection in the
> city to the "top" broadband available in the area everything is
> painfully slow ;-D)
> Perhaps my faithful D-Link router is on it's last legs, file transfer
> speed within my home network is CONSIDERABLY slower than it used to be!
> not unusable but still noticeable to the point of a film being quicker
> to copy onto USB stick and physically move the stick into the other
> machine!

Sounds more like poor cabling.  The output of ifconfig should show the 
errors, but not what caused them.  Cabling can be odd too.  I have a 125' 
piece plugged into my switch here, goes to the basement, across it to a 
drilled hole beside the old telephone copper, up the outside wall to a 
point above the back porch roof which is 2" lower than the houses roof 
overhang, to the other end of the porch roof, tiewrapped to an eyescrew 
there, then stretches about 50 feet to another screw eye at the gable peak 
of my shop building in the back yard, thence into the upstream port of a 
small hub out there.  Its been hanging there, blowing in the wind for a 
decade.  Winds exceeded 100 mph a couple times.

My milling machine computer on that remote hub has
gene at shop:~/linuxcnc/nc_files$ uptime
 10:47:25 up 22 days, 17:10,  7 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00

In that nearly 23 days, ifconfig reports:
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 38:60:77:4e:38:1b  
          inet addr:192.168.71.4  Bcast:192.168.71.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::3a60:77ff:fe4e:381b/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:6825680 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:7567693 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:1279018415 (1.2 GB)  TX bytes:3297884090 (3.2 GB)
          Interrupt:28 Base address:0x8000 

4.4 Gb of data moved in 23 days, zero errors.  And frankly I have no clue 
why its still working!
 
> Hey ho living in the country has far more benefits than drawbacks and
> us humans are nothing if not adaptable! And one day Our government
> will see high-speed broadband for all as more important than getting
> from London to Birmingham 10mins quicker!
> 
> If you have any ideas why my home net has slowed I will of course try
> them (perhaps in another thread as this is not even my thread & I don't
> like hijacking others!)
> 
> Pete S

The router should be between your switch/hub and the internet only, and 
your local switch/hub should not go through it to get from machine to 
machine, only thru the switch/hub to the next machine.  The router should 
do the NAT translation between your local addresses all in the 
192.168.xx.xx range and whatever the router was assigned as IP address by 
your ISP's dhcp server.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS