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the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

ee2
Guide
Guide

the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

i am having trouble accessing the internet thru my GS108v3 from a linux box.  the old winNT box works fine.  under the winNT box, i downloaded the prosafe plus utility to retrieve info from the GS108v3 switch and even after re-booting after the install, the program can not find the box.  i've powered down and unplugged the switch and still nothing from the prosafe utility.  again, i am able to access the internet from the winNT box.

Message 1 of 19

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ee2
Guide
Guide

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

just to recap,

 

my linux box had sporadic connections to the internet to the point where i could no longer connect no matter what i did.  in the past, i had removed and re-installed a network connection service within linux.  i had removed (right down to reformatting the HD) my linux OS and reinstalled it from scratch.  i even tried installing (after reformatting again) another distro.  all of these temporarily worked, but quickly stopped after 2 or 3 connection attempts.  during this time, my other computer (winNT) had no problem connecting but it was slow.  i had past the slowness off to the fact that the winNT OS has been acting flaky for a long time now, but we hardly use it so i never investigated it.  i disconneced my switch (both power and ethernet cables) for a few minutes then reconnected.  nothing i tried seemed to work long term.  i finally disconnected the switch and brought it into work so that i could take picts of the ser. # and send it in to DaneA.  the switch did not get reconnected for approximately 24 hours.  after reconnecting the switch, everything seemed to work fine and has remained so for about a week now.  this is the longest i've been trouble-free of this problem since it started.

 

oh, and something that may or may not be related, is that last night, my phone line went dead, but my DSL line remained active.  this morning, after calling the phone company, i found that my DSL line was also dead.  they fixed the line(s) and everything is back up and running.  they said that the line problem could have caused my lines to act flaky since my phones were dead but the DSL wasn't.  although i have not experienced any phone problems until last night and the internet connection problem has been going on for several months, i'm not sure if this is related, but i'm also not willing to rule it out.  (i'm thinking like maybe some kind of electrical short where the connections are sporadic).

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Message 18 of 19

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philmckerracher
Aspirant

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

Turn off your Windows firewall (temporarily). It's a known bug.

Message 2 of 19
DaneA
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

@ee2,

 

Welcome to the community! 🙂 

 

The GS108v3 is a pass-through, unmanaged switch.  It will not be really detected by the ProSAFE Plus Configuration Utility and there is nothing to configure on the switch since its unmanageable.  

 

Kindly check the physical connections of your existing network setup.  Is the GS108v3 switch directly connected to a modem-only device or a combination of modem-router?

 

 

Regards,

 

DaneA
NETGEAR Community Team

Message 3 of 19
ee2
Guide
Guide

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

DaneA,

 

thanks for the info. on the GS108v3.

 

to answer your questions:

 

1. if by checking the physical connections, are you asking to make sure all the ends are fully inserted into the swiches/modems/NICs of the computers?  if so, i did check those (forgot to mention that on my 1st post).  if, however, you mean check for proper thru-put vs. resistence of the signals in each line, i do not have the proper electronic equipment to do that.  in light of that, since both computers are in the same room, i did swap the network cable from the winNT computer over to the linux box (ie., the linux box was connected to the line that the winNT box was using) and the same thing happens with the linux box (no internet, but it reports that there is a local intranet).  i've done a number of different diagnostics on the linux side to determine if it's the OS and come up empty so i wanted to move to the switch to see if there may be a problem there or at least rule the switch out as being the problem.

 

2. the GS108v3 switch is directly connected to a modem-only device (it's a DSL modem that the phone company gave me when i signed up for their DSL service).

Message 4 of 19
ee2
Guide
Guide

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

philmckerracher,

 

thanks for the reply.

 

at work now.  will have to try your suggestion tonight to see if this works.  the firewall is 3rd party not microsoft if that helps.

 

 

Message 5 of 19
philmckerracher
Aspirant

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

@DaneAThat's wrong, it's not unmanaged and the ProSAFE utility should (and sometimes does, but not reliably) manage it.

http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/datasheet/en/ProSAFE_Web_Managed_Switches_DS.pdf

Message 6 of 19
philmckerracher
Aspirant

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

Also, I see that it's now possible to manage the switch just by pointing a web browser at its IP address (if you have the latest firmware). You don't need the ProSAFE utility at all.

 

This is actually a bit worrying because there have been a bunch of really nasty web management vulnerabilities discovered in Netgear routers lately. I don't think switches are affected and this particular model isn't on the list of vulnerable devices but if I had known I don't think I would have purchased it.

Message 7 of 19
DaneA
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

@philmckerracher,

 

It was mentioned on the initial post of @ee2 that the switch he has is a GS108V3 which is a pass-through, unmanaged switch.  The ProSAFE® Gigabit Web Managed (Plus) Switches includes the latest switch models that are available in the market listed below.:

 

GS105Ev2

GS105PE

GS108Ev3

GS108PEv3

GS116Ev2

JGS516PE

JGS524Ev2

JGS524PE

 

As you can observe, there is no GS108v3 listed.  Kindly double-check the contents of the data sheet you have posted. Smiley Happy  

 

Here is the link to the data sheet for the GS108v3 switch:

http://www.netgear.jp/download/datasheet/GS105v3_GS108v3_DS_27Apr1118-4903.pdf

 

 

@ee2,

 

First, kindly verify if the switch model that you have is a GS108v3 switch.  You may send me the serial number of the switch via private message so that I could verify it here on my end.

 

Based from your reply, if ever the switch that you have is a GS108v3 or any ProSAFE Gigabit Web Managed (Plus) Switch model, you will need to have a router in between the DSL modem-only device and the GS108v3 switch.  It is because the DSL modem-only device does not have the capability to provide private IP addressed to the local devices such as PCs connected within the local network.  A router has the capability to provide private IP address to all of your local devices so it could get online at the same time.  

 

Here is the network setup that I suggest:

 

 

As per the image above, the modem-only device should be connected to the WAN port of the router.  If ever you ran out of ethernet ports on the router or you just wanted to extend the local network, then you can connect the GS108v3 switch to one of the LAN ports of the router so that you can connect additional devices such as printers, PCs, etc.  You can access the internet on all of your PCs at the same time. 

 

 

Regards,

 

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

Message 8 of 19
philmckerracher
Aspirant

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

@DaneAApologies, I misinterpreted the data sheet (the numbering scheme). It's not surprising in that case that ProSAFE doesn't work!

Message 9 of 19
DaneA
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

@philmckerracher,

 

Its alright! 🙂   

 

 

Cheers,

 

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

Message 10 of 19
ee2
Guide
Guide

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

DaneA,

 

thanks for the qick reply.  i sent you a private message with a pict of the bottom of my GS108v3 switch (since that was my 1st email via this website, hopefully you got it by now).

 

the network setup as you show it in your mesage, is setup very similar to what i have.  the differences in my setup are that i do not have an "official" server.  they are just 2 computers that connect to the switch along with the DSL modem.  this uses up 3 of the 8 connections.  so far, this setup has worked flawlessly for several years (the current switch is a replacement for an old switch that died).  my problems seemed to start recently after my linux box did an upgrade.  after the upgrade, i still had connection to the internet for the rest of the session.  i logged out and shut the computer down for a few days.  came back and could not connect to the internet.  no errors showed up that i could see.  tried many different things to fix the problem but the best i could do was get the connection to only work temporarily for a session.  more often than not, i could not connect even when re-doing the initial "fix" that i had tried.  i went to various linux forums and they had me try different things but nothing seemed to work permanently.  as i had mentioned above in my 1st post, i came here to see if i could get the diagnostic software to work on my winNT box simply so i could rule out the remote possibility that the switch is the problem.  if i could determine that the switch is not the problem, then i would have more info to return to the linux forums to see what next to do.

Message 11 of 19
ee2
Guide
Guide

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

philmckerracher,

 

i managed to try your suggestion of stopping my firewall while starting up/running the prosafe util., but that did not work.  the utility eventually returned a dialog box that said:

 

"

               Discovered switches

No switch exists in the local area network!

                            OK

"

 

BTW, i'm using ver. 2.3.5 of the prosafe software (i downloaded it just before i started this thread).

Message 12 of 19
philmckerracher
Aspirant

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

My mistake, your particular switch won't work with ProSAFE software (mine is a different model, with an 'E').

Message 13 of 19
DaneA
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

@ee2,

 

I got your private message.  Based from the image you have sent, its verified that the switch you have is GS108v3.  

 

The server in the image I have posted is just for example purposes.  What I am trying to highlight is about the usage of a router in the simple network setup.  

 

Also, you mentioned that your setup is working flawlessly before.   It is possible that there could be a configuration that was lost on the Linux box after it did an upgrade then shut down.   It could be that the Linux box you have was configured to function as a router.  I am not familiar with Linux and there are several variations of this (such as Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.).  Here are my questions below: 

 

a. While both of your Linux box and old WinNT box are both connected to the GS108v3 (and the GS108v3 is connected to the DSL modem), what is the IP address that your Linux box obtains while its connected directly to the GS108v3?  

 

b. Is it possible that you restore the Linux box on a state wherein the update was not done yet?  I am referring to somewhat a restore point just like in Windows OS.  Is this possible?  If ever its possible, I recommend you to do a backup of your important files in your Linux box.  On the other hand, if you are not also familiar in doing it, then I suggest that you seek assistance in the Linux forums about the procedure.

 

 

Regards,

 

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

Message 14 of 19
ee2
Guide
Guide

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

 

DaneA,

 

response to your point "B":

as mentioned above, i don't think that it's the netgear box, but since i've previously tried a lot of different approaches in linux to fix the problem without consistent success, i am here trying to rule out any possibility that the culprit is the GS108v3.  if the GS108v3 is ok, then that might help provide info to anyone on the linux forums that the real problem is with the OS.

 

altho' i've already tried an OS restore as one of the means to fix this problem (which didn't work), i don't think doing so again will change the outcome.  i've also tried backing up all data and doing a total reformat of the HD and a clean re-install of the OS.  this enabled me to get online, however, since the install was from a DVD, the OS attempted to do an update.  after the update, i still had internet access until i later shut down the computer and re-started it several days later.  at that point, i figured that maybe this particular distro (ubuntu/linuxmint) had developed a bug, so i downloaded another distro (manjaro) from work and did another full install (ie, reformat HD and do a fresh install).  during both installs, no custom software was added, i tried to keep the install as clean as possible.  same scenario in both instances.  occasionally, i can get connected to the internet if i delete my network configuration and "add" a new configuration using the defaults that each distro shows me.  most of the time, however, this does not work.

 

during this period, the winNT box seems to work exceptionally slow, but it does work.

 

is it possible that maybe with the new OS upgrade (regardless of distro), my cobbled up network using just a switch and not a router is no longer a viable option?  i'd hate to spend a lot of money on a router if i don't have to as funds are real tight right now.

 

another thing i tried, is to remove all connections to the GS108v3 except for the one to the DSL modem and the linux box.  this did not work.

 

 

response to your point "A"

1. as for the IP address of the linux box, i don't recall.  i will have to look this up this weekend.

 

2. on the linux box, i have previously done a lot of terminal work identifying the IP address, various pinging attempts, listing reports of various stats and submitted these to the linux forums.  so far, i've come up empty.

 

3. i've recently purchased a new laptop with win10 loaded.  this will replace the old winNT box.  since this laptop does not have an ethernet port, i decided to buy an external "ethernet to USB" NIC.  i am planning this weekend to 1st try to connect my linux box to the internet thru this.  maybe my internal NIC card is burning out?  once i am done testing with that, i will install the USB NIC to the new laptop to see how well that works.

 

Message 15 of 19
DaneA
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

@ee2,

 

I just want to follow-up on this.  Were you able to perform further testing?  If yes, let us know the updates. 

 

 

Regards,

 

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

Message 16 of 19
ee2
Guide
Guide

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

DaneA,

 

currently in testing mode.  the problem in the past has been sporadic with more connection refusals than allowing a connection.  so far, i've been able to connect twice between shutdowns and am still able to connect.  this apparent change seems to have occurred after i totally disconnected the switch from all power/network cables for over 24 hours.  (i had brought it to work to take a picture of the serial # for you and later brought it home only to re-connect it after approx. a 24 hour disconnect).  altho' in the past, i had done a total disconnect, i only waited a couple of minutes before re-hooking up the switch.  maybe that wasn't enough time elaspe?  maybe i should've waited 10-15 minutes?  again, not sure if this is the answer or a fluke at this point.  also not sure why the winNT box was unaffected.  will report back after maybe another week goes by.

Message 17 of 19
ee2
Guide
Guide

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

just to recap,

 

my linux box had sporadic connections to the internet to the point where i could no longer connect no matter what i did.  in the past, i had removed and re-installed a network connection service within linux.  i had removed (right down to reformatting the HD) my linux OS and reinstalled it from scratch.  i even tried installing (after reformatting again) another distro.  all of these temporarily worked, but quickly stopped after 2 or 3 connection attempts.  during this time, my other computer (winNT) had no problem connecting but it was slow.  i had past the slowness off to the fact that the winNT OS has been acting flaky for a long time now, but we hardly use it so i never investigated it.  i disconneced my switch (both power and ethernet cables) for a few minutes then reconnected.  nothing i tried seemed to work long term.  i finally disconnected the switch and brought it into work so that i could take picts of the ser. # and send it in to DaneA.  the switch did not get reconnected for approximately 24 hours.  after reconnecting the switch, everything seemed to work fine and has remained so for about a week now.  this is the longest i've been trouble-free of this problem since it started.

 

oh, and something that may or may not be related, is that last night, my phone line went dead, but my DSL line remained active.  this morning, after calling the phone company, i found that my DSL line was also dead.  they fixed the line(s) and everything is back up and running.  they said that the line problem could have caused my lines to act flaky since my phones were dead but the DSL wasn't.  although i have not experienced any phone problems until last night and the internet connection problem has been going on for several months, i'm not sure if this is related, but i'm also not willing to rule it out.  (i'm thinking like maybe some kind of electrical short where the connections are sporadic).

Message 18 of 19
DaneA
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: the prosafe plus utility won't recognize my GS108v3 switch

@ee2,

 

Thanks for the update.  I'm glad to know that everything is working fine. 🙂 

 

Feel free to post your future concerns here in the community. 

 

 

Cheers,

 

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

Message 19 of 19
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