Weird NIC Problem. Almost all hair gone now!!!!!!!

[Budman1758]

OK. Here is the deal. I have 2 computers that are used for ftp service. Both computers have 3 NIC's in them. All the NIC's are different make in each computer. 2 of the NIC's connect to external dsl IP Addresses that are direct to the Internet. The other is connected to the internal LAN.

There are 2 FTP "domains" and each one is attached to only one of the external IP's. Both work fine. The FTP software in use is Serv-U v4.

The weird problem: after somewhere between 5 and 25 mins one of the NIC's just seems to "turn off" It does not respond to connection attempts from the Internet. If I "bump" the connection by either hitting the "repair" option or disable and re-enable the card it will start working again just fine...for the same time period.

This is driving me up the wall. Most of the time the connection that "quits" is the inactive one. (not as much traffic). I have found and disabled the "let the computer turn this connection off to save power" option in the properties for the card and still same thing. I also found an option for registry tweak from another thread in this forum for the "lanmanserver autodisconnect" time period. That has been st to disable disconnect.

Both of these computers had Windows 2000 Server installed on them using pretty much the same config and this problem did not exist. I recently "downgraded" them to WinXP Pro and this is when this problem started. The hardware is exactly the same.

Any ideas?? My hair supply is getting pretty sparse these days.....

 

[Accessdabbler]

First, glue some of your hair back on.

Next, why not swap out the "bad" NIC and see if the problem goes away? NICs are cheap nowadays so even if it isn't the problem, having another NIC lying around won't cost you your job.

 

[Morsing]

Could it be a power management problem??

Cheers Henrik Morsing
Certified AIX 4.3 Systems Administration
& p690 Technical Support

 

[Budman1758]

Any and all power management functions I can find are disabled. Computer never goes to sleep. never hibernates, drives do not stop spinning and no screen saver. Power management for each network card is also disabled.

As for replacing the NIC's I can do that but as stated in the original post they were working just fine and I did not have this problem when the computers were running Win2K Server. Hardware is exactly the same.

Your thoughts on using all the same or all different NIC's in each machine? Some have said that its better that way and others have said it doesn't matter at all. Opinions on that are welcome.

Thanks

 

[Accessdabbler]

I suggested replacing the NIC because it sometimes isn't worth the time and effort to figure out why it doesn't work. Switching the NIC will at least tell you whether the NIC is bad or not. If the NIC turns out to be good, then you can continue pulling hair...

 

[uddball]

It might be an IP address problem. I was involved in a configuration where a W2K server had two NICs, one from an ADSL router, the other to the LAN. The ADSL NIC in the server was initially set to be assigned its IP by the ADSL router, but then we began experiencing a similar symptom where comms to/from that NIC would seem to cease within your noted time range. If I disabled and re-enabled the NIC then it would again work for the same period of time and stop again. The engineer who set it up just got me to assign a static IP that he nominated to the NIC that was having the problem, and it's been sweet since.

 

[AliGazi]

i think uddball has got it right