IPCOP - technical question~

[Anton-AHA]

Hiya,
I have an older machine running IPCOP firewall with three network cards. (NICS)
Using IBURST as my preferred service provider ;-)
The issue is that IPCOP machine goes thro periods of connection dropouts and PPPoE connections attempted. Restart afer Restart, seldomly reconnecting.
Sometimes it does... I use the command "> ifconfig eth1 down - which is my external NIC, and the connection immediately starts and connects everytime??? Straight onto the internet.. what does this mean, faulty network card... They are old cards, but they seem good? It's unlikely to be patch level problems on IPCOP,
If I use Windows XP machine the internet connection is sturdy..
So it's not that..
It's to do with 'my machine' and the workings of what it is exactly that happens when one forces network card down*..
Any ideas welcome...

;-)
Ant

 

[Anton-AHA]

For the propellor-head guru these might help too ;-)
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These appear in the /var/log/messages:
Mar 26 00:24:47 ipcop kernel: NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth1: transmit timed out
Mar 26 00:24:47 ipcop kernel: eth1: transmit timed out, Tx_status 00 status 2000 Tx FIFO room 1536.
---
Here's when she drops out:
Mar 26 00:27:31 ipcop pppd[24776]: No response to 3 echo-requests
Mar 26 00:27:31 ipcop pppd[24776]: Serial link appears to be disconnected.
Mar 26 00:27:31 ipcop pppd[24776]: Script /etc/ppp/ip-down started (pid 24867)
Mar 26 00:27:31 ipcop pppd[24776]: Couldn't increase MTU to 1500
Mar 26 00:27:31 ipcop pppd[24776]: Couldn't increase MRU to 1500
Mar 26 00:27:31 ipcop pppd[24776]: sent [LCP TermReq id=0xb "Peer not responding"]
Mar 26 00:27:31 ipcop ipcop: PPP has gone down on ppp0
Mar 26 00:27:32 ipcop rc.updatered: /etc/rc.d/rc.updatered locking for 24869
Mar 26 00:27:34 ipcop dnsmasq[24901]: started, version 2.20 cachesize 150
Mar 26 00:27:34 ipcop dnsmasq[24901]: read /etc/hosts - 7 addresses
Mar 26 00:27:34 ipcop dnsmasq[24901]: reading /var/state/dhcp/dhcpd.leases
Mar 26 00:27:34 ipcop dnsmasq[24901]: reading /var/ipcop/red/resolv.conf
Mar 26 00:27:34 ipcop dnsmasq[24901]: using nameserver 196.7.142.132#53
Mar 26 00:27:34 ipcop dnsmasq[24901]: using nameserver 196.30.31.122#53
Mar 26 00:27:34 ipcop pppd[24776]: sent [LCP TermReq id=0xc "Peer not responding"]
Mar 26 00:27:35 ipcop rc.updatered: unlocking from 24869
Mar 26 00:27:35 ipcop pppd[24776]: Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 24867), status = 0x0
Mar 26 00:27:37 ipcop pppd[24776]: Connection terminated.
Mar 26 00:27:37 ipcop pppd[24776]: Connect time 2.2 minutes.
Mar 26 00:27:37 ipcop pppd[24776]: Sent 845440 bytes, received 176692 bytes.
Mar 26 00:27:37 ipcop pppd[24776]: Exit.
Mar 26 00:27:38 ipcop red: Connectioncheck: will connect again

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr *
inet addr:1.1.1.1 Bcast:1.1.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:136828 errors:3 dropped:0 overruns:5355 frame:3
TX packets:911410 errors:1 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:34023
collisions:6553 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:37478586 (35.7 Mb) TX bytes:99268982 (94.6 Mb)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr *
inet addr:192.168.0.* Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1251071 errors:7 dropped:0 overruns:7 frame:7
TX packets:206275 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:132371624 (126.2 Mb) TX bytes:58313482 (55.6 Mb)