[ale] Why is my switch dropping me?

[Patrick Ramsey]

Sounds like its a bad port.... Either that or the configs on the port are bad.  Set them back to default and to allow autonegotiation.  The try setting them to 10 meg, then to 100, then 10 full and then 100 full.  See which keeps your connection and which doesn't.  Then move to a different port and try the same routine.

-Patrick

(leave the 3com nic at autonegotiation)

>>> Eric Webb <foobar at stargate.totalchaos.org> 06/08 12:47 PM >>>

I have a RH5.2 box with a 3Com 3C905B-TX plugged into a Cabletron Smartswitch
6000 series.  In short: the switch seems to randomly drop my port for random
periods of time.  I seem to lose all outside connectivity during this time. 
This even seems to happen when I'm in the middle of a telnet session
actively typing (so it's not a lack-of-traffic issue).

I have had some Windows people here tell me it's a configuration issue with
my card's 100Mb autonegotiation, but I'm not sure.  I've even tried pinging
myself during this outage from another machine and I think (strangely enough)
it worked.

Here's my NIC's module init info on boot-up:
 3c59x.c:v0.99E 5/12/98 Donald Becker http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html 
 eth0: 3Com 3c905B Cyclone 100baseTx at 0x1000, 00:50:04:0f:c9:13, IRQ 10
 8K byte-wide RAM 5:3 Rx:Tx split, autoselect/NWay Autonegotiation interface.
 Enabling bus-master transmits and whole-frame receives.

What can I try to fix this quite annoying problem?