Re: ethernet collisions

[Heikki Vatiainen <hessu@cs.tut.fi>]

Bob Nielsen wrote:
> I have a system running potato which suddenly started experiencing a large
> number of collisions on its ethernet port.  It seems to work fine for a
> while and suddenly I get collisions and everything grinds to a halt.  This
> just started and I was wondering if anything had changed in potato which
> would cause this, or if I might have developed a hardware problem. 

I have a third alternative. Maybe one of your network cards is 
running in full duplex mode and the other one is only half 
duplex. However, sometimes the cards come up in matching 
duplex mode and things work fine. I have heard about cases where 
this particular "feature" has caused problems like the ones you 
are describing.

I myself have two machines connected with a cross over cable and
the link between them is running at 100Mbits/Full duplex. The both 
machines have a 3c905b network card and I ensure the correct mode 
of operation by loading the driver modules with "options=12".

> Bob

// Heikki
-- 
Heikki Vatiainen                  * hessu@cs.tut.fi
Tampere University of Technology  * Tampere, Finland