performance issue when running a NAT box ?
 

I've set up a Linux box (Slackware 10.1) that does SNAT for 3 computers.
It is a pentium 166MMX with 64 RAM and hard-disk of 5 GB with 5400 rotations.
I'm using 2 PCI network cards: a 3com card and an Intel card.

The problem is that after a while, after let's say 500 MB of traffic, it keeps dropping packets. The problem is solved when I restart the computer. or I flush the iptables chains, and restart my firewall.

Has anybody seen this before ?

This also happens to me on a Win98 machine running Winroute. It may be a feature of the connection rather than an OS problem. However I'll be watching this thread!