I am experiencing what seems to be excessive packet "collisions" on my 10BaseT network. There are five systems on the LAN and they have a mixture of NIC's. The collisions seem to occur most often when I am installing software or copying/moving large files. I know that some collisions are normal but, there seems to a collision for every packet sent. It really seems to slow things down substantially. Could some one explain what is going on? Thanks for the help!
Offhand, you might want to double-check all your cable connections, the quality of your cables and how your cables are laid out. The first two are really important since they cover about 900f all cable-related problems. Although you are running only a 10Mb network, you should consider using CAT-5 (100Mb) cables since this cable type is certified for reliable data transmission at high speeds. How your cables are laid out is equally important. You need to keep the minimum amount of cable needed between connections and replace with shorter lengths of cable (i.e., you need a minimum of 15 ft. to make the connections but you are using a 25 ft. cable instead of a 15 ft. cable). Also, try to avoid running the cables along the same path as electrical cables since the EMI (electro-magnetic interference) radiated from the power cables could interfere with the data transmission. When I installed the network in my department at work, I used a striaght drop down configuration for the network cables (i.e., the cables drop from the ceiling to the computer) and let the electrical cables run on the floor to minimize EMI and to keep the cable rat-nest more organized. Hope this helps... Christopher Reimer - To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e