(blogged and mailed)

Hi Erwin,

Thanks for your report.  It's good to hear that both you and Gracie are doing projects with the students, under the direction of Ms. Knox.

I agree that if there are enough ports (also called jacks) on the wall for the computers you need to connect, it's of course best to put each computer plugged into one of those wall ports directly.    But if there's a shortage of ports on the wall, a little ethernet switch can help a lot!  If you run into a case where the switch / or hub seems essential to the plan, but it is broken, replacing the switch is certainly an option.  You can ask Mr. Miller if the school still has any spares, and if not then please bring it up with Sara and me and we can probably provide one from CUIP.  

Also -- if it's one of the older Linksys models that does not have auto-detect, but instead has two different places to plug in the cord for the uplink vs. another device port -- check that the cable going to the wall port is plugged into the uplink port on the hub and that there is not anything plugged into the switch's port that is an alternate to the uplink (shown by a raised line).  Ooofff, I am going on and on so wordy, but if it's that kind I hope you will see where the problem comes up.  

  ==Mitch