Honey… Cables Don’t Have Feelings

As I was doing a daily check of our client’s networks, the connection broke completely.

One of our biggest clients called immediately because every minute without a working connection is a heavy financial loss for them. We were in red alert mode. It’s not often that everything breaks at once.

While we were looking everywhere, we had to focus on the server room because that was the likely culprit.

A server with 500+ plugged-in cables looks like spaghetti. You have to plan and manage it carefully or you make a huge mess and create all sorts of new problems.

I started to investigate the server when I noticed an ethernet cable that looked out of place. I followed it from one port to… the port right next to it. This had created an endless loop for the server because the server was feeding back into itself. I pulled the cable out and BAM! Everything worked again.

Me: “Who did this?”

An employee whose job isn’t IT spoke up guiltily.

Employee: “M-me?”

We asked him why he thought plugging a loose cable into a massive server was a good idea.

Employee: “I saw this cable lying there, and no one was using it. I saw two free ports and put it in them so it wouldn’t feel useless.”

After a massive facepalm from everyone else at the company, we banned him from the server room.