Dell PowerEdge R300 with BMC5722 NIC (tg3 driver)

[Keith Edmunds <kae@midnighthax.com>]

We're setting up a number of these servers and we're having problems with
the NIC locking up. It retains its IP address, but the 'dropped' count
keeps increasing and no network traffic flows over the connection.
ifdown/ifup on the interface fixes the problem.

We've tried downloading, compiling and using the tg3 driver from the
Broadcom website, but that's made no difference.

I've found a couple of other references to problems similar to this, most
notably http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-netdev/2009/6/9/5902123
(although that user is running RHEL rather than Debian, so it does look
like a kernel issue).

Anyone else seen this and, more importantly, found a way around it?

Thanks,
Keith