[zenx]

Hello everyone, I wanted to take the time and respond to this post for I too have been having disconnect issues. At first it seemed random but then it started happening more frequently and now is pretty much every morning without fail.

Now, brief update of my current situation.

I have had zero problem up until about 3 weeks ago, I do have my WHS statically assigned to my network and all port forwarded. I have replaced the nic card and router and of course reassigned everything.

I have narrowed it to a few things I personally think it has to do with.

1. recently I have started backing up my computers, although the backup shows successful.
2. when the WHS becomes unavailable to my network after trying dozens of things to simply walk over to the WHS and just unplug the network cable for 1 second and plug it right back in puts me back in the game. This is the thing that has me most curious.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Thanks again!

~Z

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

The first thing I would suggest is updating the NIC driver.

[zenx]

Drashna (WGS), on 09 March 2010 - 08:23 PM, said:

The first thing I would suggest is updating the NIC driver.

I have had 3 different NIC cards in the last week, of course updating to the latest drivers. On a side note, just wanted to add that I also have fine tuned each NIC within the Advanced settings such as Jumbo Frames to be consistent and Sleep unchecked.

Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming =)

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

One setting that causes issues is checksum offloading (or similar).

Oh, have you tried changing out cables?

[zenx]

Drashna (WGS), on 10 March 2010 - 04:06 AM, said:

One setting that causes issues is checksum offloading (or similar).

Oh, have you tried changing out cables?

Have tried the cable but not the checksum thing, although I dont see that setting. Thing that has me perplexed is the fact it does it every morning and just simply unplugging the network (cat 5) cable and plugging it back in 1 second later give me the WHS back.

I am going to turn off back ups tonight and see if that does anything.

Thanks again for your reply.

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

Have you tried setting a static IP for you home server?

[zenx]

Drashna (WGS), on 10 March 2010 - 06:34 AM, said:

Have you tried setting a static IP for you home server?

Static IP has been set on this server since day one. I just found after a test I did that Turning off computer back up and everything is good. So it appears that while setting computers to back up it disconnects at some point after or during that.

So this appears to be the problem, this a well known issue?

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

It's dropping during computer backups?

[Jeff Flowerday]

I had the same problem. The NIC would lock up during computer backups. My NIC was an onboard Realtek.

I installed an Intel Nic and disabled the onboard Realtek and never looked back.

[zenx]

Drashna (WGS), on 11 March 2010 - 03:28 PM, said:

It's dropping during computer backups?

Yes this is correct. To the response below this one I wish replacing the nic would have fixed the problem but sadly after 3 nic's it has not fixed itself.

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

It still sounds like its a network issue. Have you tried switching out cables, and if possible, network hardware?

[zenx]

Drashna (WGS), on 12 March 2010 - 10:40 PM, said:

It still sounds like its a network issue. Have you tried switching out cables, and if possible, network hardware?

I have replaced the router with a new DLInk 655 gigabit router and also replace the nic card with a trendnet gigabit (2003 drivers).. Cables I have toyed with but not so much. The problem seems that it could be more related to the way the server & the client (pc's) are communicating during this process (backup).

Just wierd that simply disabling the back up feature everything is back to normal.

[Allard]

I'm having the exact same problem.

I've installed WHS yesterday and copied about 500GB to my server without any network problems. I configured my backup for all my 3 computers and set it to run backup every morning. This morning my WHS server is disconnecting from my network when it's running a backup for about 5 minutes, but it does not fail every time. I've done about 6 backups, of which 3 failed. All I have to do to let it pick up my network again is just unplug my network cable from my server for 1 sec and plug it back in. I've tried to renew my ip-adress when my network on my server went down, but I get the message that my DHCP server cannot be found. I've tried both my (internal) network cards but they give the same problem.

I've checked my event viewer and there are no errors reported there.

Specs of my server:
Processor: AMD Athlon 4850e
Memory: 2GB PC6400 RAM
Motherboard: Jetway JNC62K
OS Harddrive: Seagate Momentus 120GB (ST9120822A)
Storage Harddrives: 3x Western Digital 1TB (WD10EARS) 1x Western Digital 1TB (WD10EACS)

Router: Netgear WNDR37000

Anyone has a idea to fix this issue?

-edit-

Just tried to backup my netbook, lost my connection when the backup was at 97%.

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

Sounds like a driver issue most likely. Try updating your server's drivers before doing anything else.

[Shukuyen]

Hi,

I have a similar problem. When I try to backup a client the clients network connection is immediately disconnected and the backup fails with a duration of 1 second. I use the onboard NIC of the Asus M3A-H/HDMI mainboard.

Do you have any suggestions what I can do other than using an additional network adapter?

Thanks and bye,
Shukuyen.

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

Drashna Jaelre (WGS), on 22 March 2010 - 08:29 AM, said:

Sounds like a driver issue most likely. Try updating your server's drivers before doing anything else.

[Shukuyen]

Thanks for the answer, Drashna.
What drivers do you mean? The drivers for download on the acer website are really old ... Windows Homeserver itself is up to date.

Bye,
Shukuyen.

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

The drivers for the NIC chipset.

[Alderaan's]

Drashna Jaelre (WGS), on 13 April 2010 - 06:58 AM, said:

The drivers for the NIC chipset.

Interesting, my WHS is using an on-board NIC, and I got LOTS of packets dropped (5-8-12+ %) up to the point, where streaming was out of the question, accessing the drives was a pain in the...

I updated to the latest driver available from the mobo's site (ASUS P5LD2-X), the problem was still there.

However, having figured out what chipset was used, I got to Realtek and got the latest W2k3 drivers.

But I still get from time to time lots of dropped packets

Anything else to look for before going and buy another NIC?

I have also changed the cable, tried to ping from 2 different computers - one wireless, the other wired, in all cases, the packets dropped at the same time.

I bought a switch, plugged the wired ones (WHS and desktop) to that one, and I still get it, but lot less often than I used to before getting the new driver.

[Drashna Jaelre (WGS)]

Other than drivers on both server and client, disable checksum offloading on all computers, and then flow control on all adapters.... a new NIC.