network connection randomly drops or is unavailable

Hey all-

I have two openSuSE installations:
11.1 x64 on HP Proliant DL360G6
11.3 x64 on HP 8100 Elite

Both installations run well, with the exception of randomly dropping the ethernet connections. Both servers have 2 statically assigned IPv4 addresses, and are physically connected to the same switch. Previously, I had an 11.0 x86 installation in place of the 11.3, which did not exhibit the same behavior. Unfortunately, that server needed to be replaced ( with the 8100 Elite ), which now has the same problem that the 11.1 installation has been experiencing since it was imaged.

Whether you are connecting via SSh, VNC or MySql, and i’m sure other protocols as well, the server seems to drop off of the network every 5-10 minutes. The server is then unreachable from hosts on the same switch, or other hosts around the network, for about 10 seconds; and then is discoverable again. All open socket connections drop during the 10 second downtime. I have experimented with disabling the firewall, which made no difference. I have also changed the IPv4 addresses, thinking maybe the connection was being stepped on by a rogue host trying to use the same IP. During the outage, i was however, able to navigate to a website from the downed machine, so it seems as though you can get out, just not in. It almost seems to be a firewall or switch issue, with the exception of the issue occurring while the firewall was disabled.

At this point, I’m at a loss, and hoping someone can help me.

Please let me know if any additional information will be required in order to further troubleshoot this issue.

–Thanks
Joe

Hi,

Are you using network manager to manage your conections ? I did have those issues with the network manager when I set static IP. You could try managing them with ifup just to test.

Hey DaaX-

Sorry it took me so long to respond. We ended up running into some larger issues that needed to be tended to first. In any case, both interfaces are controlled by ifup. I recently disabled IPv6, so I’m going to see how that works out. If you have any other suggestions, I’m all ears.

–Thanks
Joe

Do these machines support large numbers of simultaneous users or transfer very large files?

If so, I’m going to send you via the Novell Private Messaging System a link to some stuff I’ve written (and not yet ready to publicly announce) about configuring TCP Buffers and Congestion Control.

The symptoms you describe are commonly caused by mis-tuned TCP/IP.

Sometime soon I hope to publicly announce these papers and can then publish the link to all.

Tony