Network stops for a few seconds every now and them

[Goi]

Hi, I have a problem with my network, and I'm not sure of the source and the reason. Basically, I'm running an ethernet LAN using an SMC Barricade 8 port router to share my cable modem connection. Every now and then(I'd say about once every few minutes, or even less than that), my entire network totally freezes. Initially I thought it was just my ISP's cable connection getting saturated with my neighborhood, but then I did a ping on the other PCs in my LAN, and even pinged my own PC's name, and then even localhost, and it just freezes at the prompt for like 10s before I finally got ping replies. Does anyone know why this would happen, and what I could do to remedy it?

 

[Goi]

anyone?

 

[Garion]

Sounds like a duplex mismatch. Try to hard-set all your NIC's to 10Mb/s, half duplex and see if that clears it up. If so, move to 100Half, then to 100Full and see where it breaks.

- G

 

[Lorne]

If you havent already. Set dns's and indevidual ip#'s, I had the same problem at lan parties.
Another is watch who may be overclocking, I made that mistake myself, Cheap RCA 10/100 didnt like the PCI bus over 35mhz,It would get weird and holding the net up and made it a pain to find the problem when all was testing ok.

 

[Goi]

How would I force the individual NICs to full duplex? Also, I don't have the NICs on fixed IP addresses. I used to have it that way till I got the router, and it worked straightaway so I didn't mess with it. Do I use the 192.168.0.x addresses like I did before?