[conspire] running ifconfig - getting errors and collisions

[Ryan Russell]

Darlene Wallach wrote:
> I recently got dsl. Connectivity seems to have been working
> very well until today.
> 
> I seem to keep losing connectivity and/or having connectivity
> problems. Sometimes
> $ ping -c4 www.google.com
> ping: unknown host www.google.com

Who is the provider?  Speakeasy appears to have some frequently 
unresponsive DNS servers.

> $ ping -c4 www.google.com
> PING www.l.google.com (66.102.7.99) 56(84) bytes of data.
> 64 bytes from 66.102.7.99: icmp_seq=0 ttl=246 time=10.9 ms
> 64 bytes from 66.102.7.99: icmp_seq=1 ttl=246 time=10.7 ms
> 64 bytes from 66.102.7.99: icmp_seq=2 ttl=246 time=10.4 ms
> 64 bytes from 66.102.7.99: icmp_seq=3 ttl=246 time=10.6 ms
> 
> --- www.l.google.com ping statistics ---
> 4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms
> rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 10.446/10.689/10.929/0.186 ms, pipe 2

Once the name is resolved, connectivity looks good.  At least, for these 
8 packets in that 3 second window.

> $ /sbin/ifconfig
> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:D0:B7:79:FF:A2
>            inet addr:68.183.66.92  Bcast:68.183.66.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
>            inet6 addr: fe80::2d0:b7ff:fe79:ffa2/64 Scope:Link
>            UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
>            RX packets:151416 errors:258 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:258
>            TX packets:111640 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
>            collisions:139 txqueuelen:1000
>            RX bytes:168631221 (160.8 MiB)  TX bytes:11995948 (11.4 MiB)
> 
> I called technical support - no reported problems.
> 
> What could be causing the errors in RX and the collisions? Is there
> something I can do?

Framing errors can sometimes indicate a duplex mismatch.  Collisions 
indicate that you are running at half-duplex somewhere.  Does your 
equipment have full-duplex lights on it?  Are they lit on one end and 
not the other?

					Ryan