[rescue] Long network paths

[jwbirdsa at picarefy.com]

   Random question of (probably little) interest: what's the longest (most
hops) path on your LAN from one machine to another, without going through
routing?

   I was just thinking about this last night while lying in bed with a
fever (which may explain *why* I was thinking about this) and on my network
it's 7 hops:

   1) from machine A via FDDI (SAS) to a Cisco WS-C1100
   2) via FDDI (DAS) to a HP Advancestack 2000 switch
   3) via 100baseTX FDX to a small five-port unmanaged switch
   4) via 10baseT to a 3Com hub
   5) upstairs via the air return duct and down the hall, 10baseT, to
      a little Netgear hub that serves the bedrooms
   6) via 10baseT to a Linksys WAP11 802.11b access point
   7) via 802.11b to machine B

There are other paths which are just as long, but not as interesting.

   Does your maximum path length get longer if routing is allowed?

   --James B.

P.S.: I would like to nominate for "most secondhand-friendly feature" the
30-second window after powerup or physical reset on the Cisco WS-C1100 and
WS-C1400 during which you can log in from a terminal and enable privileged
mode without any passwords. Once I found this feature in Cisco's online
docs, it was trivial to get into these concentrators and reconfigure them
for my use. No cooperation or knowledge on the seller's part was required.