DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I do this sort of thing way more often that I care to admit…

The story starts with a switch: a 3Com 3C16464A 12-port fast-ethernet switch for you bitheads in the audience. It has worked marvelously for a long time (at about 2% of its capacity given the 3x7r3m3 traffic levels I bring in, not) but recently developed ventilatory arrhythmia — that is, the fans started groaning like old men in traction — and eventually my initial solution, cranking up the volume on the stereo, was no longer appropriate.

It was apparent that the fan inside the switch had thrown a rod, or its engine block had cracked, or at the very least the head gasket needed to be replaced. And so, armed with my enormous knowledge of electronics, not to mention my fabulous track record with assembly and repair of machines of all sorts, I decided to fix it myself.

Of course, I called 3Com first to ask about a warranty replacement. The phone tech was cheerful and supportive, and managed not to burst into pitiless laughter as she informed me that the repair would take 45 days. She also said I could purchase an “advance replacement” for $300, which is about 4x what these 3C16464As sell for on Ebay. I declined.

My next step is the one I regret: I decided to repair the switch myself. So I spent an hour trying to figure out what brand of fan is used inside the switch: I quizzed three levels of support techs at 3Com, pored over 3com.com, and searched the web for a dozen combinations of relevant terms via Google. But ultimately I failed. And so I waited until the weekend, when I took the switch offline and popped the case open for inspection. Fan model numbers plus more research yielded the fan manufacturer’s site, and a half-hour after that I’d learned that the fans cost $15 apiece (I’d need two) and have to be imported. This was becoming expensive, but I reasoned that I could probably figure out how to wire a resistor inline with each fan to reduce rotational speed, quieting the noise.

I stewed for a few days on my plan.

I think my success as a software engineer is partly due to my belief, deep down, that I’m just a little bit smarter than everyone else. So, even though I thought it was fairly likely that I’d electrocute myself in the process of replacing these fans, I continued to stew, weighing the possibility of early death against the possibility that I had the soldering-iron chops to repair and even upgrade the switch.

Fortunately, my wife really is a little bit smarter than everyone else, or at least smarter than me, and she frequently spares me the absurd consequences of my conceit. She said, “Why don’t you just buy a new switch?”

The light dawned on me, like the morning, you know, just before sunrise. It took only a few minutes of digging to learn that NetGear makes fast-ethernet switches designed specifically for home offices, where noise is a concern: the FS-116 has an external power supply, and therefore no fan, and is therefore silent. I plugged it in yesterday and am absolutely loving it; I can now hear my firewall, previously masked by the eternal-train-wreck sound of the 3Com unit, and have already begun planning a fanless replacement, which of course I will design and build myself.