connection timing out

[bunty18]

I have one windows 2003 server PowerEdge Dell machine. It has 2 network cards, one for external and one for internal network. I am using this server as an email server and have installed exchange 2003 on it.

For the last few days my external connection is dropping. It is connected with the T-1 line that is working 100% perfect. I have checked the network cables, there is nothing wrong with them.

Whenever I ping it, it pings for few hours and then shows connection timeout. If I look at the network connection it says connected. And if I go into properties it shows it is receiving packets that is very slow but not sending out.

If I try to access the internet at the same time on that server it works fine and you can see the bytes coming in and going out fast, in other words the connection gets active and if I ping that server, it starts making the connection. Or if I disable and enable the network card it starts working fine or if I unplug the network cable and plug it back in, it starts working fine.

I have checked the Events logs and I do not see any error message related to the network card.

Anybody could help me out with this??????????
Thanks in advance

 

[compuveg]

I would double-check your link settings on the NIC that's running slowly. Instead of allowing auto-detection of link speed and duplex, set it manually to what you know is right.

Hope that does it--

 

[bunty18]

Thanks for the reply-

How do you check you link settings??????

please help

 

[bunty18]

This card is 1.0 gigabit network card, but anyways I have changed the link setting to 100mbps/ full duplex. Let see if I can solved the problem.

Thank YOu

 

[compuveg]

It sounded like you were having trouble with the internal NIC. Whichever NIC is responding slowly should be manually set to the correct speed and duplex.

There's a number of ways to get there, but you can always get there through device manager. Get the NIC's properties, goto the advanced tab, and set the 'speed & duplex' setting there. (Some manufacturers might refer to it differently)

Just make sure that if you're on a 100/full capable switch that it is set that way. I expect that you would have big problems if it was a 100/full switch and you were set @ Gbit. I know that running 100mbit/full on a 10mbit/half switch could result in as little as 2.5Mbps bandwidth. Might as well go with appletalk for that kind of speed.

I also am wondering about the 'internal/external' NICs. Sometimes NICs are referred to as internal and external in a cluster configuration. The external NIC would actually connect to the 'inside' subnet of your firewall, while the 'internal' NIC would be connected wither directly to another machine in the cluster, or to a 'backend' switch that was strictly for communication between nodes of a cluster.