[lug] Can a Hub go bad?

[Tim Klein]

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Hello All,

Of course a hub could go bad, but could it cause this problem?:

I have a DSL connection from a Cisco 675, and two machines with 
static IPs, connected to a 10/100 3Com hub.  The Cisco is in 
bridging mode, giving the 2 machines access to the Internet.  
These machines run Debian Sid.

About 2 days ago, I noticed the activity and collision lights on 
the hub start to go nuts, as in, they were blinking several 
times a second, non stop.  After trying to track down what was 
causing this (shutting machines off, power cycling the modem, 
etc) I was not able to stop this activity, or even track it.  
After about a day, Internet performance degraded to the point 
where it was considerably worse than a dial up modem.

So today, I started to attack the problem seriously.  I found 
that the packets seem to be UDP.  This is a guess, as I run 
SNORT.  It sends me a daily report, usually my network is about 
95% tcp.  But the last report was 85% udp!  This was a giant 
change.  Which would also explain why my tcpdump investigating 
turned up nothing.  What's a similar tool to track udp? 

The reason I am suspecting the hub is this:  with both machines 
off, and only the Cisco powered up, I still have plenty of 
activity lights blinking, on the Cisco and the hub.  Today, I 
unplugged the hub, found my cross over cable, and plugged the 
Cisco directly into one of my machines.  All abnormal activity 
has disappeared.  Internet performance is back up to par.

What the heck could be causing this?  I can't imagine that it 
really is the hub, but I can't find anything on either of my 
machines spewing packets.

TIA,

Tim
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== Timothy Klein || teece at silverklein.net   ==
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== "Hello, World" 17 Errors, 31 Warnings... ==
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