Problem: Frequent temporary network outage on debian

["yzhh" <yezonghui@gmail.com>]

Hi, all.

I have 3 debian linux machines on one subnet along with some other
windows machines. (Only) resently (within a week), these linux boxes
are suffering from temporary network outage while the windows machines
goes well. Specifically, They lose connection with the gateway
(pinging gateway fails) every a few minutes, and this network outage
last for half to one minute.

One of the debian machines also have windows 2k installed, when
running w2k on that machine, the problem does not happen.

All these indicate that some resent change on the network
configuration have introduced compatibility problem between the debian
machines and the subnet swithchers. (Since one of the debian boxes
have not updated for more than a month, the probability that the
problem is introduced in a resent debian update is low.)

But I just don't where to start to diagnose the problem, i.e. what
logs to look in for possible reasons, what test to take, and what are
possible solutions. The problem's random timing behaviour made it even
harder.

So, if anyone has experienced such problem or has good suggestions on
diagnosing, please do help me.

   Bets Regards,
yzhh