>>>Do you use hardware checksum offload?
>>
>>no. it's disabled.
> 
> 
> So that's not the reason. I asked because I had it enabled.
> 
> 
>>(btw: IIRC i had the same issue on a G3 b&w in the office (this runs a 
>>bm0 NIC then) where i put in some spare NICs (fxp) to circumvent the 
>>problem. i'll do some reseach when i'm in the office.)
> 
> 
> Is it that bad? My G4 spilled out that message every few minutes and
> the network connection worked fine.

uhm, i thought it to be noteworthy.

the problem scales with the speed the packets come in/go out:

* downloads from an ftp server outside the LAN (connected with 4Mbps) 
give no errors;

* transfers with a host in the same LAN at 10Mbps give rarely errors of 
this kind, but they are there;

* transfers with a host in the same LAN at 100Mbps gives a busy syslogd...

the problem starts immediately, as i already noted, as soon as the ssh 
handshaking takes place.

the network is useable but surely has lots of unneccessary retransmits 
due to the CRC errors.

timo