On Wed, 15 Sep 1999, William R. Dickson wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> My NetBSD box is a Motorola StarMax 5000/250 with a pair of NIC cards in
> it, both using the Digital chip. de0 is connected to a DSL bridge. de1 is
> connected to a hub, and the system routes for the rest of my network.
> 
> Most of the time, it works great.  But if I'm putting a constant load on
> the network (not a heavy load, just a constant one), I get periodic
> "pauses" -- every 15-60 minutes, I'll suddenly get a 15-30 second period
> during which I can't ping the router at my ISP.  Then it returns to normal.
> I've tried swapping de0 out for another card, with no effect.  The ISP
> can't find any problems, nor can the DSL line provider.  The only clue I
> have is this error in my messages log, which appears several times whenever
> the pause occurs:
> 
> Sep 15 19:42:14 ghek /netbsd: arplookup: unable to enter address for
> 204.85.32.5 (host is not on local network)
> 
> (204.85.32.5 is not a local machine; it's the host I'm communicating with
> when I generate the constant traffic.  Okay, I'm playing Warbirds.  I admit
> it.  But the problem's definitely not at their end; I can't ping any
> addresses at all beyond de0's IP.)
> 
> Does this suggest anything to anyone?  Any ideas what the problem might be?

Bring this up on tech-net. Something's messing up with arp. You might also
try ping -n whent hings are bad as ping will normally trigger a name
lookup.

Take care,

Bill