XP Machines still asleep on out network in the morning

[edzy55]

Hi all

Can anyone help with this? We have nortel baystack 450t switch's. Recently, some users arrive in the morning and try to login to the network. Some get a cached login and don't pick up the login script, some do.

It's as if the pc's aren't quite on the network when they initially login???

Any idea's? They login into a new windows 2003 domain which is the only new addition to the site? Just want to rule out the network switch's.

Thanks

Edzy55

 

[dane775]

Are you doing DHCP on your network?

Check the IP addresses of the work stations when they first come in to the office. See if they have good addys...or if they have the 169.x.x.x address that shows up if you lose connectivity. Check all the other network stuff like the gateway.

Check to see if you can ping those work stations from logical test point (perhaps the baystack switches themselves, but off the local net would be better.

 

[edzy55]

hi dane,

thanks for the response. Yes, machines are on dhcp and all is ok once they logon. Except some dont pick up the login script when they first login. users who have this problem seem to be able to open outlook etc so must pick up a valid ip. if they log off and back on they pick it up script, v odd. We do have a new 2003 domain, i am upgrading the firmware on all the nortels to see if this helps. Could it be a lazy dhcp or something like that? I know of an old problem similar to this with novell clients and the login would pop up before the nic had started.

Am v confused about. Any ideas welcome.

Thanks again.

Edzy

 

[anthonyanderberg]

Could it be that you're using traditional spanning tree on the user's ports and the ports haven't started forwarding packets by the time the PC boots up? If so the user port will be in a 'blocked' state until the switch is sure the new port isn't about to cause a network loop.

Try disabling spanning tree on a few user ports and see if that helps - or better yet switch to Faststart spanning tree, which assumes new ports won't cause a loop and starts forwarding packets right away.

Also: what model(s) of Baystack switch are you using?

 

[edzy55]

Hi Anthony

That would make sense as we quite recently turned stp on. The baystacks we have are baystack nortel 450/24t. Roughly about 3 years old which I'm in the middle of upgrading the firmware.

After investigating further in the stp setup. All ports are set to in participation on the switch as 'normal learning'. The options I have are 'disabled' and 'fast learning'. Would you suggest I make them all fast learning?

Thanks again for the help.

Edzy55

 

[anthonyanderberg]

As I recall in the last Campus Design document Nortel recommended using fast start for your user ports and turning it off on your uplink ports. You could use fast start for your uplink ports as well, but you'd want to go through the traditional STP design process and understand where your root bridge is going to be, ect, ect.