off-topic:
A long time ago we found that a certain ping packet would be dropped with about 30%, which in turn triggered a monitoring system to register 'server down' when enough packets in a row were missed.
This would happen about once every day or so, leading to an operator being paged (usually at 3am). Very annoying problem and incredibly hard to debug. We'd replaced just about every piece of hardware except for a stupid little T-connector. My buddy Jasper and me looked at it and we both more or less at the same time said 'it can't be'. We swapped out the T-connector, problems solved.
It took the better part of a day to nail that one, I still remember the hostname (chopper) of the SGI box that the thing was connected to (SGI Challenge, an Indy sold as a server with one of those silly thinnet adapters dangling off the back, even though it had a UTP connector too).
Some bugs... I can't say I'm mourning the demise of coaxial ethernet and the bus topology.
Heck, even just a few months ago I spent 2 hours troubleshooting a 10G fiber connection on all brand new gear before swapping out the brand-new cisco 10G SR SFP module which was DOA.
Thinking the same exact thing after swapping out everything else, including all patch cords on both ends "It can't possible be this SFP module"
Yup.
