[ale] Network gurus input please (again)

[stephen]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2001 at 05:27:54PM -0400, jenn at colormaria.com wrote:
> So I'm not a network admin. I'm barely a sys admin. ;)
> I'm trying to work out some packet loss (5 - 15% during heavy traffic, 3 -
> 10% off times) on our network, and I'm really not good at troubleshooting
> these sorts of things.
> 
> A network admin at our co-lo suggested that the auto-negotiation (their
> switches run full duplex...our NICs autonegotiate) could be at fault, but
> from what little I understand the packet loss and collision would be so
> terrible that it would be immediately noticeable if that were in fact the
> case.  Can someone please confirm/deny this?

I had a similar experience with about 10%-20% packet loss on a file server
set to auto and a switch set to 100Full.  The network admin set the switch
to auto and we saw no more packet loss.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think
you will see greater packet loss in a scenario where one/both link partners are
set to half duplex.  If you want to force the NIC to 100Full, then you might
want to consider the mii-diag utility from http://www.scyld.com/diag

stephen

> 
> Would a program like spray help determine where the loss is occurring under
> heavy utilization? 
> 
> Also does anyone know of any memory leaks or other troubles with kernel
> 2.4.7 running iptables with connection tracking?  
> 
> Cheers
> jenn
> 
> 
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