[ale] Ethernet info/question

[greg.freemyer at gmail.com (Greg Freemyer)]

All,

I've been sporadically fighting a series of sporadic issues with my 3
samba file servers.  Installing latest patches, updated one OS, etc.

I came to the conclusion it had to be a network issue, not a server
issue and got serious about troubleshooting it and I think I found the
culprit to be a 24-port switch.  It will take a couple days to be
sure.

==> Info
I found a 48-port managed distribution switch at Amazon for $320 or
so.  (Cisco SRW248G4 48-port 10/100 + 4-port Gigabit Switch - WebView;
on sale for a couple more days)

I did not realize you could get a managed switch that cheap, so I
thought others may find it useful to know.

==> Question
In my troubleshooting it seemed that I had a Ethernet loop somehow.
ie. switch1 -- switch2 -- switch3 -- switch1

How bad is that?  Could it have be the real source of my problems, and
not my existing distribution switch like it seems to me?

How can I easily figure out where the loop is?  (ie. I have a
relatively small setup, but still about 75-100 end-points and 10 or so
switches, with over half of those being in labs or under peoples desk,
etc.  I doubt I even know where they all are.

Thanks
Greg