Here's a weird problem.

I'm setting up a server machine with Debian 3.0r1 in a friend's dorm room. Setup went well except for some strange reason SSH is really twtchy. Some times I'm able to connect and sometimes I'm not. when I do connect, i will time out at various times, longest i stayed connected was 3 minutes i think.

Recently however I have not been ablet o connect at all.

here's what i get now when i try to connect:

$ ssh 10.69.13.86 -v
OpenSSH_3.5p1, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0x0090700f
debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config
debug1: Rhosts Authentication disabled, originating port will not be trusted.
debug1: ssh_connect: needpriv 0
debug1: Connecting to 10.69.13.86 [10.69.13.86] port 22.
debug1: Connection established.
debug1: identity file /.ssh/identity type -1
debug1: identity file /.ssh/id_rsa type -1
debug1: identity file /.ssh/id_dsa type -1
ssh_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer
debug1: Calling cleanup 0x41b1b0(0x0)

Any ideas?

Looks like you have a connection problem. Doesn't look like SSH itself is the problem ... it's your network connection in general. What happens if you use ping -c 1000 <friend's pc ip>.

How about packet lost there ?

"-c" on cygwin isn't reconized... not sure if that was a typo. a regular ping resultsin this:

$ ping 10.69.13.86

Pinging 10.69.13.86 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 10.69.13.86: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.69.13.86: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 10.69.13.86: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 10.69.13.86: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for 10.69.13.86:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms