{sorry for the delay debated if here or tales from tech support was more appropriate}

I work for a helpdesk for a benefit in the UK I wont say which one. Currently working from home this makes me responsible for connecting things up in the morning. Alas this was not going to be my day.

About a week ago, I had settled down to a day's work when I'd noticed many of my internet based systems were not working, disconnecting and reconnecting on their own. Me being the expert in all things technical {I do have an HND in Technical Support} try a few lower level checks first and even try the tried and tested reboot and DNS flush.

Nothing.

I'm still getting the constant on and off of the VPN we use to connect to the office.

I relent and call the it help desk. A man answers let's call him Jim.

Jim gets to work trying many things similar to what I did but in his attempts to remote in to my machine gets in half starts a process and is promptly forced out.

The system was actively disconnecting him every two minutes. This went on for a further 20 minutes with him relaying the instructions rather than remoting in.

Jim then asks... How are you connecting to the network... And I respond with Ethernet. I then look at my connections... Feeling along them I then hear an audible click...

I then give out an OMG of realisation.

The network cable was in, but not fully. And this was causing the issue.

TL;DR TIFU by wasting an hour of company time because I hadn't connected a single cable correctly.