Our replacement network hub arrived today. A netgear DS116, with 16 ports to replace one of the 8-port ones that died. I removed the surviving 8-port hub and installed the 16 port, and now we have 15 ports available for computers to plug into. This is actually 3 more than we had with the two 8-port hubs, because 2 ports are used up when you stack the two hubs together, and one of the ports on the old one wasn’t working anyway.

You can’t be too rich, too thin, or have too many network ports.

With the new hub installed and running, we discovered that my “temporary” network cable labeling system was beginning to break down. The white electrical tape with black felt pen numbers was peeling off, leaving a nasty sticky residue and some doubt as to which cable was which.

Time to check out Home Depot and Radio Shack for cable labelling systems. It turns out that my ideal solution – clear shrink wrap over paper labels – was not going to work because of a) lack of availability of clear shrink wrap, and b) a minor technical difficulty in that the shrink wrap sleeve would have to be of a diameter sufficienty large to clear the RJ45 plug on the end of the cable, but then have to shrink more than 50% to be snug on the fairly thin CAT5 cable.

So, plan B – inkjet printed labels, cut up with scissors and then taped to the cable with transparent packing tape. We’ll see how long that lasts…

Oh – and while I was out, I got a haircut.