Intermittent problems with LAN transfer speeds

["." at babolo.ru]

> On Thu, 08 Jan 2004 13:02:23 +1000
> Q <q_dolan at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> 
> > The first thing you should try is setting the ethernet card to use
> > autosense. This enables the autosense pulse to be sent to the switch,
> > without this some passive/unmanaged switches can get very confused and
> > switch speeds and duplex at seemingly random intervals for a while
> > before eventually sorting themselves out again. You should only ever
> > set
> > speed & duplex manually if you can set it at BOTH ends. 
> > 
> > The easiest way to identify this as the problem is to do a 'netstat
> > -i'
> > and check for collisions. If everything on that LAN segment is full
> > duplex all the time, there should be none. You will most likely have
> > to
> > wait for the problem to occur again before the collisions appear.
> 
> A few things ..
> 
> First, both speed & duplex are set manualyl at both ends. In fact, I did
> this more than a year ago as a recommendation to solve this particular
> problem we're discussing now. In other words, the problem existed before
> I manually set speed/duplex, and afterwards.
> 
> Second, the problem doesn't ever sort itself out. If I don't reboot the
> server, the problem continues indefinitely. 
Does
ifconfig xx down; ifconfig xx up
helps?

Can be packet loss triggered by a lot of small
packets on this interface?