Odd problem - can't connect from certain clients on gigabit

[unixadm]

Guys,

I work as a Sr. Systems Admin with Linux, Solaris, and AIX everyday. The time has come for me to upgrade my home network to gigabit as I'm backing up a lot of data to an IBM Ultrium LTO-3 tape drive.

Long story short, my two primary systems are based on Nforce4 boards with Gigabit ethernet. One system is an SN25P and the other uses an Asus A8n32-SLI motherboard. Both are on a 192.168.200.0 network using a mask of 255.255.255.0. My router is a Linksys WRT54G with an IP of 192.168.200.254/24.

System 1: 192.168.200.1
System 2: 192.168.200.183
System 3: 192.168.200.253
Router: 192.168.200.254

System 1,2,3 are on Gigabit. System3 is my Linux server running Suse 9.1 with an Intel Pro/1000 NIC. All three of these systems are connected via Cat6 cable to an SMC 10/100/1000 5 port switch which is uplinked to my Linksys router.

Problem: System 1 is my SN25P running WinXP PRO SP2. It can ping System2 and my router, but it cannot ping System 3. System 2 can ping all systems. System 3 cannot ping or connect to System 1, but can connect to everything else.

So for some reason I cannot get System 1 and System 3 to talk to each other over Gigabit. I'm at a loss here because all of the masks, MTU's, etc all match. I'm not using Jumbo frames yet. Each system does have connectivity to the internet. I tried rebooting, clearing the arp tables, etc - no dice. Running TPCDUMP on my Linux server does not show any traffic from 192.168.200.1.

Any thoughts?

 

[Spartacus]

Make sure all drivers are up to snuff of course.

After that, check out the switch. I have a new client that is on Gigabit and he was having similar problems. I almost told him to just go 10/100 as it would be better performance for less money. He has the bux though and he wanted to stick with Gigabit. Turns out the Netgear 16 port switch was teh sux. Went to Netgear's own forums and there were admins dissing it all over the place. Replace his switch with a similar Linksys and all issues are fixed.

Not to say it's the switch for sure, but with all systems having trouble it's possible.

 

[unixadm]

I got it. I found after dropping back to 100mbs, the problem went away. I think somewhere the NIC in my SN25P was being set improperly. It has some odd settings in it's configuration tab. I installed the Nvidia x64 Nforce4 6.82 drivers again and all is well once again.

Gotta love backing up at 50-60MB/S!