Dartmouth students experiencing network difficulties over the past few weeks may themselves be causing the problem. According to Computing Services, laptop computers running Windows XP that are connected to the Internet through both the wireless and cable networks are crashing residence cluster connections when a "network bridging" feature is enabled. Bill Brawley, director of user communications at Computing Services, said that the problem begins when a laptop with Windows XP switches between the wireless Internet card and an Ethernet cable connection. "There are two sort of network interfaces then," Brawley said. "The bridge feature is handy on a home network, but on our network it bridges those two devices and sets up a loop in which packets travel between the networks, sort of a feedback loop. This messes up both networks for the whole building."
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