Problems with LinkSys 10/100 cards

[Robert G. Brown]

On Fri, 5 Feb 1999, Brian Denheyer wrote:

> At this point a comment from Donald, or anyone else in the know, on
> what an "ethernet packet being to big and spanning multiple frames" is
> would be really helpful. :-) What would be even more helpful is a
> comment on why such an error would then cause subsequent problems with
> transfers.

One place this is known to occur (as I recall) is if you are running
IPX.  It also used to occur regularly on networks with a VMS system
speaking DECnet on it.  As I recall, it is rare to see this on a TCP/IP
only network unless something is wrong.

Note that I could be wrong about this -- I'm shooting from memory here
-- but this is a fairly common error reported in the student dorms here
and I'm pretty sure that I recall correctly that it is connected with
Novell traffic on the same line.  I think that turning off IPX if you
are running it usually solves the problem.  I believe that Red Hat
systems tend to come with IPX turned on by default (even though there is
usually no Novell network to join), which accounts for the relative
frequency with which the problem is seen.

   rgb

Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb@phy.duke.edu