downloading e-mail is blocking network

[Matthew Seaman]

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On 19/05/2010 21:48:36, Chuck Swiger wrote:
> On May 19, 2010, at 1:44 PM, Marco Beishuizen wrote:
>> On Wed, 19 May 2010, Chuck Swiger wrote:
>>> Are you using NAT?
>>
>> Not that I know of.
> 
> You presumably would know from the IP your machine has-- if it's RFC-1918 unroutable, NAT is involved.
> 
>>> It sounds like something has a limited number of NAT state slots available, and is dropping connections past that limit.  It probably will help to try to serialize the activity of fetchmail / procmail so that they aren't opening new connections for every email being processed, if that is what is going on.
>>
>> Seems worth trying to increase this number but how do I do that? Is this changable in FreeBSD or do I change this in the modem (couldn't find anything about this in the modem though)?
> 
> It would be in whatever device is doing NAT, assuming it is being used.
> Running tcpdump against your traffic during this sort of problem would likely be informative.

Hmmm... I wonder if it could be something like this?

http://www.benzedrine.cx/ackpri.html

although at first glance, the traffic flows would be in the wrong
direction to trigger this effect.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

- -- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                   7 Priory Courtyard
                                                  Flat 3
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey     Ramsgate
                                                  Kent, CT11 9PW
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