Hi,

I have had a few issues with the Realtek 8139 cards I am using, and I am not
sure whether it is a hardware or driver problem. My setup is as follows :

I have 3 i386 machines running NetBSD 1.5.1 and they are all sitting on the
same hub.

        ------------------------
        |   ftp    |           |
        A <------> B           C
       38.1       38.2       38.4

If I do a large (500meg+) ftp from A to B, while at the same time doing an
ftp from B to A, everything is happy. (each machine can ping every other
one)

        ------------------------
        |          |           |
        A -------> B ------->  C
            ftp        ftp

However, if I am doing a large ftp from A to B, and then start an ftp from B
to C, I begin to see problems. Usually the network interface on A (or B)
will appear to stall after a little while (usually between 10 seconds and a
minute), and it will be unable to ping any of the other machines. The ping
fails with the message :
"ping: sendto: No buffer space available"

If I do an 'ifconfig rtk0 x.x.x.x', the interface wakes up, and I can ping
etc. etc. However if the ftps are still going on it will stall again after a
little while.

It is not always the same box which stalls, but at least one of them does
*every* time. The fact that it is not always the same machine which has
problems would suggest that it is not a flakey card??

Has anyone seen these kinds of problems before, any ideas what could be
causing them, and any solutions?? Would it be a good idea to replace *all*
of the network cards and give it another bash? How about the hub, could that
possibly be the problem?

Any help would be much appreciated...
 Stuart