HELP: Conntrack table filling up !!!

[Mircea Ciocan <mirceac@interplus.ro>]

	Hi everybody,

	I have this problem with connexion tracking table filling to the max 
and then it remains in a state "near the edge" that will allow only a 
small number of new conexions and will cause a large packet loss, even 
"sendto: operation not permited" sometimes when I ping the neighboor 
routers and so on.
	Everything got cleared up if I delete the ip tables rules that deal 
with contrack and remove and reinsert ip_conntrack module.
	Now if there is some method of avoiding this ( I only see a discution 
from 2001 that was not conclusive) or if there is is an method to 
time-out faster those conexions in conntrack table or even a method of 
globaly quick-flush that table ( could be a even an experimental patch, 
I'm willing to try it and report) I'd very muck like to hear about it.
	Anyhow, thank you for your good work and have a happy new year.
		
		Regards,

		Mircea Ciocan

P.S. kernel is 2.4.18 and machine have enough ram ( 512 MB) and 
processing power ( P-III 800MHZ), traffic is something like 50 Mb/s top 
ans 25-30 medium.