Umm, generally with NICs you treat them as disposible, if they cause a
problem you replace them.
For diagnostics get Linux, you can do pretty much whatever you want with
Linux, provided you have a NIC that supports what you want to do (ie. packet
sniffing). TTYL

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pic microcontroller discussion list
> [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On Behalf Of Russell McMahon
> Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 20:05
> To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> Subject: [EE]: Faulty 100 mBps Ethernet LAN - Help desparately needed
>
>
> A friend is having MAJOR network relaibility problems on a 100
> Mbps ethernet
> network using all 3-Com equipment. These problems have risen sudenly and
> recently.
>
> His concluding pargraph says
>
> > Unfortunately, try as might I can find no sign of any
> diagnostic software
> > for testing local Ethernet networks.  I can find any number of utilities
> for
> > testing remote networks (i.e. Internet) but nothing like what I think I
> > need.  This I find strange.  I would have expected to be able to find
> > utilities to test throughput and error rates etc.
>
> Anyone know any useful software for this purpose (prefaerably (of course)
> free but anything worth paying for also would be nice to know about ?
>
> Rest of his comments attached for information.
>
>
>
>         Russell McMahon
>
> ________________________________________________
>
> > Russell,
> >
> > I am tearing my hair out here and rapidly becoming suicidal.
> >
> > Since returning from the US my PC at work has been increasingly
> unreliable
> > and has now reached the point where I can't get more than a few minutes
> work
> > done before any one of many applications crashes.  Up until now the
> crashes
> > have been benign (in the sense that only my time is wasted in rebooting)
> but
> > as of this morning I had a crash which has corrupted a PADS
> schematic file
> > and cost me a morning's work.
> >
> > My strong supsicion is that the crashes occur following an attempted
> access
> > over the 100-Mb Ethernet network to the our central server.  Other
> machines
> > on the network seem to be able to access the server without similar
> > problems.  The machines all have 3COM 3C905B NIC's and the hub is a 3COM
> > OfficeConnect TP800.  Both my machine and the server are running Win95.
> The
> > other machines run WIn98 and WinME.
> >
> > In some cases I get an error reported by the application about
> 30 seconds
> > after the machine has "locked up"  - and I can then recover by allowing
> > Windows to shut down the application.  This doesn't always work however
> > since the application concerned will often then not restart at
> all or will
> > crash immediately after starting.  In most cases I can recover from the
> > crash by rebooting my PC, however in some instances it has also been
> > necessary to reboot the server (most applications and most data
> reside on
> > the server).  A possible explanation for the need to reboot the serever
> may
> > be that corrupt file data may be getting into the server cache.
>  As far as
> I
> > know there is no way to manually flush the server cache so its difficult
> to
> > prove the theory.
> >
> > The problem seems to have gotten worse as time goes by.  A supposedly
> > comprehensive diagnostic ran on my machine all night without finding any
> > problems, but it doesn't test the integrity of the Ethernet
> network.  The
> > fact that my machine seems to run OK stand-alone, and that
> other machines
> on
> > the network don't seem to be afflicted, suggests to me that my 100-Mb
> > network connection is the probable source of my problems.  Note that the
> > network is 100-Mb and so is a star topology (with a central hub).
> >
> > Unfortunately, try as might I can find no sign of any
> diagnostic software
> > for testing local Ethernet networks.  I can find any number of utilities
> for
> > testing remote networks (i.e. Internet) but nothing like what I think I
> > need.  This I find strange.  I would have expected to be able to find
> > utilities to test throughput and error rates etc.
> >
> > Any ideas ?
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Ken Mardle
>
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