Broadcom 4401 problem

[Bruce Guenter <bruceg@em.ca>]

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Greetings.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1150 laptop which has a built-in Broadcom 4401
NIC.  I am using Gentoo's 2.6.8.1 kernel and the built-in b44 driver.
It compiles, loads, and I can get basic network traffic through it just
fine.  However, it (the NIC) locks up randomly when I try to do bulk
data transfers (with rsync for example).  I can get it to reset itself
by either taking the interface down and up, or by running "ethtool -A
eth0 rx off tx off".  Both actions appear to cause the NIC to disconnect
and renegotiate with the switch.

What is unusual, to me, is that while the NIC is malfunctioning, it
still can transmit packets.  I have run tcpdump on both the laptop and
the destnation system, and the laptop still transmits the trailing TCP
ACKs and ARPs, however it does not receive any responses.

I have tried to reproduce this with Windows (which is also installed)
but have been unable as of yet to do so.  I am not, however, ruling out
a hardware problem, as the "activity" light on the NIC flickers
constantly even when there is no traffic.

Is this likely a hardware problem, or a problem in the driver?
-- 
Bruce Guenter <bruceg@em.ca> http://em.ca/~bruceg/ http://untroubled.org/
OpenPGP key: 699980E8 / D0B7 C8DD 365D A395 29DA  2E2A E96F B2DC 6999 80E8

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