Network randomly drops
 

Hello all,

I have a development server running CentOS and it's been giving me some networking fits over the last few weeks. It is set up with 4 network interfaces, which are always on all of the time. The odd thing with this server is that about 2 or 3 times a day it "drops" its network connection. I say "drops" because if I have it mounted through samba or I have an SSH session open I don't loose my connection. However, web browsers can't connect to it, svn can't connect to it, and it cannot ping google or any other site, or be pinged from an outside source.

The really odd thing is that I can still SSH into it, but I have to wait about 15 or 20 seconds to get the login prompt when it craps out like this. At first I thought it might be a DNS issue, but it won't even ping IP addresses.

If anybody has some trouble shooting advice it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Rob

Welcome to LQ!
Are you using dhcp to assign network addresses? dhcp leases are usually only granted for a certain (configurable) length of time, then they expire and need to be renewed.
When I was learning networking, I ran into a load of problems because of this and so switched to static addressing. Nice: I know where everything is, and it stays there. I still run a dhcp server, just in case I need an IP address as a matter of urgency, but I find that allocating static addressing keeps me, and my network sane.

tredegar,

Thanks for the reply and sorry I didn't reply sooner, I left the office early last Friday.

All four of the network interfaces have static addresses, so dhcp isn't a problem. That being the case does this seem more like a hardware problem or a borked configuration somewhere?

Thanks,
Rob

OK, we need to start from the beginning, and be very clear about exactly what is (not) going on.
Interfaces to your LAN or WAN?
Its connection to WAN or LAN?
It's a linux box, why are you using samba to mount it?
You don't loose which connection? LAN or WAN?
So it has lost WAN connectivity. Can you connect from your LAN?
Again, are you talking about ssh from LAN or WAN?
Are you pinging from LAN or WAN?

A little ASCII artwork picture of your network would also be helpful. Put it inside [code] tags to preserve spaces.