Back in Solved but Why? Belkin F5D7630 to Realtek 8139 Drop-outs, I thought I’d cured my random 20+-second network hang problem, but I celebrated too soon. While that seemed to work for a while, it didn’t last. Those options also stopped the printer (lp0) from working, which was a bit of a fatal flaw – I print TTLLP’s invoices and minutes.
As far as I can tell, the drop-outs are all the 8139-using laptop’s fault. They may only happen after resuming from suspend-to-disk, but it’s difficult to be sure of anything with an intermittent fault. I thought it was related to having all PCI devices on IRQ 10, but adding acpi_irq_balance to boot options cured that without curing the hangs.
Today, I’m trying the 8139too driver instead of the 8139cp one and I’ve built both as modules so I can try unloading, reloading and switching between them if it keeps happening.
This problem is doing my nut. I hate intermittent faults and it plays havoc with my VoIP phone, ssh, IRC and jabber sometimes. Anyone seen this before? Anyone fixed it for sure?
I have this problem on my work PC running Lenny, or I think it’s the same one. Essentially, low level network access is fine, but if I try to download a large file – like an ISO, or do a dist-upgrade, I will see a network hang. It does resolve itself in a while, or often I keep a root terminal open in which I have ifdown eth0 && ifup eth0 which is quicker.
It’s infuriating, I tried your proposed fix before I think, but I still have the problem. I’ve actually taken an old 3com card into work with the intention of popping it in the box, but I shouldn’t have to!
So, sorry… no solution from me either, but at least I can share the misery!
CT.
I think 8139too has solved it for me, but I’ve not stressed the network much since switching. It was pretty noticeable before, so I think I’d still have noticed if it was still there.