Intermittent network connection

[duncanar]

I have a FC2 system running on a supermicro motherboard (X5DAL-TG2), dual xeon 2.4 GHz and 2GB ram. The dual 1000 nic controller is an Intel 82546EB.

current kernel is 2.6.6-1.435

# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:30:48:71:93:F6
inet addr:172.18.12.4 Bcast:172.18.12.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:400 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:109 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:45967 (44.8 Kb) TX bytes:12370 (12.0 Kb)
Base address:0x4000 Memory:e8300000-e8320000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1937 (1.8 Kb) TX bytes:1937 (1.8 Kb)


My problem thus far is:
If I ping the FC2 system immediately after reboot, from windows 2000 I get a reply to the first packet but time out on the other 3. If I ping again I get a reply to all 4 packets. If the system sits idle for a short period I get no response at all. However, I can ssh from RH 7.3 system to FC2 system every time without errors. If I try and ssh using putty from widows 2000 it fails.

Can anyone shed any light on this problem?

Thanks to all in advance.

Andrew

[Picomp314]

do you have a firewall such as iptables enabled??
it seems to me that the problem is with the w2k system
do you have problems with the FC2 system itself as far as internet access
can you ping the w2k box from the FC2 one?
post your /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

[duncanar]

here is ifcfg-eth0

# Intel Corp.|82546EB Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Copper)
DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=172.18.12.4
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
HWADDR=00:30:48:71:93:F6
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=Ethernet
DHCP_HOSTNAME=eagle2.******.org


I don't think there is a problem with the win2k system because I can putty into the RH 7.3 and RH 9.0 with out any problems.

The firewall on FC2 is disabled

[Picomp314]

add the line

IPV6INIT=no

to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 up

[duncanar]

I added the change to ifcfg-eth0 but there is no change in the problem. I didn't think it would have any effect because IPV6 is turned off anyway.

Thank you for your posts though. It is always nice to know there are other good people out there helping the less informed with their problems.

[duncanar]

To keep everyone in loop, I have tried various solutions and none have made any difference.

#1 Disabled both onboard nics and installed a pci HP pro curve 10/100

#2 Removed HP pro curve, re enabled onboard nics and tried the other port

#3 Ran apt-get update and still no change to the problem.

[duncanar]

I think I have discovered the reason for my error.

I found a small typo in one of my DNS tables and have a warm fuzy feeling that that is what was cauzing my problem. The error was always occurring on the same IP address but when I changed it and updated the DNS tables to reflect the new IP everything seemed to work great so far.

I will post a followup as soon as I have changed back to the old IP and fixed the DNS tables and let everyone know if that's what the real problem was.

Thanks to everyone who read the post and to Picomp314 for his responses.