I'm currently posting this from uni - my home network is down at my computer.

The symptoms: I cannot contact any other computer on the network. Roughly half to three quarters of the packets get dropped with 'no route to host', the remainder just vanish. This is true in both Linux and Windows. I have not changed my network configuration lately. I have checked that all the cables along the way are firmly plugged into the correct ethernet port. This has happened before, and went away magically after a couple of days. The rest of the network can't contact my computer, either.

I have checked my network config, just to be sure, and it's definitely correct. The rest of the network can contact the rest of the network.

My best guess is that one of the pieces of cable along the way is dying and not carrying signals properly - does anybody have any other ideas?

I really hope that's not the case, because most of that cabling goes through the roof. :P. Fortunately we can get up there and change it, but it's going to be a real nuisance.

We do have a very long piece of ethernet cable somewhere, but it has no ends on it. I'm going to look into getting ends on that cable so I can connect my computer directly to the switch and see if that helps. If it doesn't, I can only assume it's a dead cable or a bad connection.