Dear Masters of Linux -

I'm having a pesky network problem on my RH 9 desktop machine.
When downloading large files, the transfers halt randomly, usually towards the end. Often the program doing the transfer (Up2Date) stops responding. Also happens with Galeon, and Mozilla. And yesterday I installed a different NIC card, and it still happens.
I'm plugged into a Linksys Wireless B router w/ 4 port switch via a 25 foot long network cable. The router is in turn plugged into a cable modem. The router also serves a Win 2k box by wire and my laptop (RH9) by wireless. None of the other machines seem to be experiencing this problem. Everything is configured via DHCP.

Note that other than the large download problem, the connection is mostly fine. Even after large downloads fail, the connection is still ok. Although a fair amount of email checks seem to fail inexplicably, and I do have to reload pages at times.

Bad cable? I don't really know where to look or what to test next....
I'd hate to have to run that damn cable again since it goes through the flooring.

Confounded -

-Amos

I had the same problem with my Linksys router. There is a bug in the earlier versions of the firmware that stops downloads after a while. Check the Linksys support pages and think about updating your firmware. One caveat: I did this and it glitched and fried the router. I called Linksys and they tried things over the phone and finally issued an RMA number and I returned the router. When the new one came back it had the upgraded firmware and works perfectly now.

Good Luck
Alan

Sometimes it could just be a problem on the other end - I've had occasional problems downloading large stuff from some not-so-reliable servers; sometimes they just get too busy to handle connections well. Check out Prozilla, a download accelerator that can resume an interrupted download. Really handy for things like CD ISO images and stuff!

Alan -

Excellent - Thanks for the tip. I'll try that new firmware!
wapcaplet! Thanks as well... However this problem seems to occur across many different servers, hence I'm pretty sure its on my end.

-Amos