NIC Flapping problem?

[Peter.Talmadge at CyberTools.biz]

Hi all,

Sometimes our NIC will drop connection for no apparent reason, and 
usually shortly thereafter come back online.  However sometimes it 
will freeze up the machine.

We have tried many hardware solutions including switching out the 
NIC's, switching the firewall and switch devices, and even switching 
out the motherboard which had an onboard Gb card.  Nothing seems to 
cure it, and we never had these problems prior to upgrading to RHEL4 
from RedHat 9.

Our latest effort is to slow down the NIC to 100Mb.  We have set the 
card to 100Mb/full duplex/autonegotiation off.  However, we have had 
the NIC hang on us again yesterday.  In the /var/log/messages file, 
as usual there is message like:

	Jun 14 12:30:19 maple kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out
	Jun 14 12:30:23 maple kernel: e1000: eth0: e1000_watchdog: NIC Link 
is Up 100 Mbps Full Duplex

We are running a FortiGate60 firewall, and a D-Link Gigabit switch 
that after this incident has been replaced by a Dell PowerConnect 
2708.  The server is a PowerEdge 2650.  I have tried to include some 
diagnostics that might help below.  Any help would be 
appreciated.  One other question, is this the official place to get 
the latest e1000 driver version 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/e1000, and would it help to update the driver?

ethtools -S eth0:

NIC statistics:
      rx_packets: 47386363
      tx_packets: 88662955
      rx_bytes: 4111506176
      tx_bytes: 2296849700
      rx_errors: 39526
      tx_errors: 0
      rx_dropped: 0
      tx_dropped: 0
      multicast: 0
      collisions: 0
      rx_length_errors: 19930
      rx_over_errors: 0
      rx_crc_errors: 12476
      rx_frame_errors: 7003
      rx_fifo_errors: 117
      rx_no_buffer_count: 0
      rx_missed_errors: 117
      tx_aborted_errors: 0
      tx_carrier_errors: 0
      tx_fifo_errors: 0
      tx_heartbeat_errors: 0
      tx_window_errors: 0
      tx_abort_late_coll: 0
      tx_deferred_ok: 0
      tx_single_coll_ok: 0
      tx_multi_coll_ok: 0
      rx_long_length_errors: 0
      rx_short_length_errors: 0
      rx_align_errors: 7003
      tx_tcp_seg_good: 595533
      tx_tcp_seg_failed: 0
      rx_flow_control_xon: 0
      rx_flow_control_xoff: 0
      tx_flow_control_xon: 0
      tx_flow_control_xoff: 0
      rx_long_byte_count: 4111506176
      rx_csum_offload_good: 47135867
      rx_csum_offload_errors: 52

lspci -vv:

03:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82544GC Gigabit 
Ethernet Controller (LOM) (rev 02)
         Subsystem: Dell PRO/1000 XT Network Connection
         Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- 
ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B-
         Status: Cap+ 66Mhz+ UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- 
DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
         Latency: 64 (63750ns min), Cache Line Size 10
         Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 5
         Region 0: Memory at fdae0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
         Region 2: Memory at fdac0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
         Region 4: I/O ports at dce0 [size=32]
         Expansion ROM at fdb00000 [disabled] [size=128K]
         Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2
                 Flags: PMEClk- DSI+ D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA 
PME(D0+,D1-,D2-,D3hot+,D3cold+)
                 Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=1 PME-
         Capabilities: [e4] PCI-X non-bridge device.
                 Command: DPERE- ERO+ RBC=0 OST=0
                 Status: Bus=3 Dev=1 Func=0 64bit+ 133MHz+ SCD- USC-, 
DC=simple, DMMRBC=2, DMOST=0, DMCRS=1, RSCEM-
         Capabilities: [f0] Message Signalled Interrupts: 64bit+ 
Queue=0/0 Enable-
                 Address: 0000000000000000  Data: 0000

ifconfig:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:06:5B:F3:ED:9E
           inet addr:10.10.10.67  Bcast:10.10.10.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
           inet6 addr: fe80::206:5bff:fef3:ed9e/64 Scope:Link
           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
           RX packets:47388158 errors:39547 dropped:117 overruns:117 
frame:39430
           TX packets:88664487 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
           RX bytes:4111761171 (3.8 GiB)  TX bytes:2297142353 (2.1 GiB)
           Base address:0xdce0 Memory:fdae0000-fdb00000