Occasional disconnectivity on startup

[Zxian]

I'm having a bit of a problem with my network setup at home and I was hoping some people might have some insight into this little dilemma.

I'm using the following network equipment:

Linksys WRT54GL (Tomato v1.13 firmware)

D-Link DGS-1008D

Marvell Yukon 88E8056 network adaptor (onboard on P5B Deluxe motherboard)

3ft Cat6 cable

Windows XP SP2 for one system

Windows Server 2003 SP2 for the other system

My problem is intermittent, but annoying to no end. When I start up my systems (both have the same motherboard), there seems to be about a 50/50 chance of the system not properly connecting to the switch. The connectivity light on the switch will turn on during POST, and then turn off while Windows is booting. Once Windows starts up, it will turn on again, but then intermittently drop the connection again (Windows says "a network cable is unplugged"). In order to restore connectivity, I need to either disable and then re-enable the network connection, or physically unplug and replug the cable into either the switch or the motherboard (doesn't matter which).

I've updated the network drivers on both machines and tried different ports on the switch. I was hoping that someone might be able to find a simple solution to this, short of buying some other piece of networking equipment.

[cluberti]

Silly question, but have you tried a different switch, or perhaps a hub instead? Remove some of the "switch smarts" and see what happens with a hub, would actually be my first test (I always keep a 4port hub with me for just this purpose). If it works fine with the hub, it doesn't mean the switch is bad, either - it could be the NIC driver or the card itself, or bum NEGO code.

[Zxian]

I've got an 8-port 100Mbps Dlink switch (basically the older brother of my current switch) and the 5-port version as well. I'll give each of them a try later on tonight. I don't have any straight hubs available though...

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

got any PCI NIC cards lying around? Im curious to see if it does the same thing on a different NIC.

also might try moving the adapter to the top of the list in the Advanced Settings in Network Connections

Network Connections->Advanced(on the File menu)->Advanced Settings

could also try disabling the 1394 connection and/or the wireless adapter and see if that has any affect

honestly im just guessing but ive fixed stuff before with tinkering with the settings. maybe itll work again in this case.

[Zxian]

The motherboard has a PCI gigabit connection as well (the one I'm using is internal PCIe). I could give that a go. I've never really had any troubles with the 1394 connections before, but I'll try disabling it anyways.

[PC_LOAD_LETTER]

yeah i usually disable the 1394 net adapter just because it just might be the most useless thing in windows.

[Zxian]

So... I think the problem is with the switch. I tried using the other ethernet card on my motherboard - no dice. I tried using a PCI ethernet card. No dice.

I tried using the DGS-1005D (the 5-port variant of the same switch), and it works beautifully. I tried plugging the devices into my WRT54GL, and it connects every time.

I've contacted D-Link support for a replacement. The strangest part about all of this is that once my computers are connected to the switch, I'm able to consistently pull 990Mbps from one computer to the other...

Thanks for all the help.