Platform i386

I'm running:

NetBSD bigbox 1.4ZD NetBSD 1.4ZD (BIGBOX) #3: Thu Jun 22 17:34:38 PDT 2000     \
    newhouse@pimin:/usr/s
rc/sys/arch/i386/compile/BIGBOX i386

recently I started getting my syslog filled up with:        

Oct 10 22:10:30 bigbox ipmon[121]: 22:10:30.514814             tlp1 @0:12 p \
     <work>.com,789 -> rockhead.com,22 PR tcp len 20 27648 -AP IN

It's a short packet and I have an IPF rule that says log them.

The link is a pppd, tunneled through ssh, VPN to a Solaris 2.7 machine running 
McKerras (sp?) pppd and ssh.  I didn't use to see these before and now the link 
seems really mmm ... jumpy, whereas it was pretty smooth before.  I'm pretty 
sure I haven't changed anything on either system in quite awhile.

I run a cron job that checks the links and finds entries in /var/log/messages
to generate a report on how stable the conenction has been.  The one that ran
this morning looked normal (found some records). This evening:

: ls -l /var/log/message*
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  3482116 Oct 10 22:24 /var/log/messages
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   322671 Oct 10 22:00 /var/log/messages.0.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   404089 Oct 10 21:00 /var/log/messages.1.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   349720 Oct 10 20:00 /var/log/messages.2.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   364324 Oct 10 19:00 /var/log/messages.3.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   272754 Oct 10 18:00 /var/log/messages.4.gz
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel   329380 Oct 10 17:00 /var/log/messages.5.gz

I have another VPN running to a friends machine and it seems stable and it's
over the same IDSL line.  Pretty weird man!!

Any clues as to what's going on would be appreciated.

TIA,
Paul
piminx@home.com
newhouse@rockhead.com