intermittent internet at work

[horowitz53217]

I recently installed celena on my new laptop (gateway mt3421), but i'm having trouble connecting to the internet from my wired connection at work.. It works fine at home. I have no control over router settings/firewalls/etc that are already set up here at the office. The strange thing is, the internet works for about 15 seconds at a time. It will work right after i reset the connection, and then will die again. Any ideas what might be causing this?

Scott

[scorp123]

Any ideas what might be causing this?

Your IT department maybe?

Are you really sure you're allowed to connect your Linux system to the company's network?

Where I work it is strongly forbidden to use private equipment on the company's network. You can try ... the routers will almost instantly disconnect you. And a few minutes later the security guys will show up at your desk and will want to have a chat with you and your manager about bringing 'non-allowed equipment' to the office and connecting it to the company network ...

Chances are that there might be similar rules in your office maybe?

[horowitz53217]

Yowza, remind me not to work for whoever you work for. I'm a graduate student, and thankfully just about everyone brings their own laptop. I know of other people who work in the same building who use linux just fine. And it was just fine on my old laptop (an old toshiba) with no hitches using Cassandra. I could ask the IT guys, but they're mostly not helpful for this type of thing, in my experience.

I hope there is something i can actually do, short of begging the IT department to show mercy on me.

Scott

[scorp123]

Yowza, remind me not to work for whoever you work for.

It's actually a great place to work and to improve one's skills Really. e.g. going to the server room's feels like being 'Ethan Hunt' in "Mission Impossible" ... all those retina scanners, air locks, vibration sensors ... For as long as you respect their needs for 'very high security standards' you would have no trouble whatsoever and enjoy working here

I'm a graduate student, and thankfully just about everyone brings their own laptop.

They give shiny new MacBooks or Dell machines to their students. No need to buy one yourself

I hope there is something i can actually do, short of begging the IT department to show mercy on me.

Maybe it's just a flaky cable? You can test this: Switch places with someone who claims to have an OK network connection, e.g. just for an hour, e.g. early in the morning? If the other person has no troubles connecting from your work place but you in turn still have troubles, then it must be something in the laptop. In the other case it's just a flaky cable and you could ask your IT folks to replace it.

[horowitz53217]

Okay, i admit your workplace may not be totally evil.

About the shaky cable, i forgot to mention i have a dual boot with vista, and the internet works fine with vista. I just like celena better. Could it be a problem resulting because the network may be fine-tuned for windows?

Scott

[scorp123]

i forgot to mention i have a dual boot with vista, and the internet works fine with vista. I just like celena better.

Yeap, that would be an important thing to know.

Could it be a problem resulting because the network may be fine-tuned for windows?

The network infrastructure shouldn't care what OS you use. TCP/IP is TCP/IP. But: Could be that your Mint installation doesn't get along so well e.g. with your DHCP and/or your DNS servers. Can you describe the symptoms a bit more, e.g. what are you doing when you lose your connection? Maybe it's something harmless like a missing proxy entry in your browser? Or maybe it's 'NetworkManager' trying to get a better network connection in the wrong moment. You'd need to observe what happens and check if you can reproduce those steps and then tell us the symptoms.