Laptop causing timeouts on network

[zll]

Ok. So my brother has this ancient laptop that he uses in his room for browsing and downloading. No idea what the specs are. It runs Gentoo 13.(something). Every now and again, it checks in with an update server (according to him). The problem is, when it does this, it causes timeouts on our internet connection. If you disable the network on this machine, the timeouts stop.

Any suggestions as to what can be causing this? Or what I can do to troubleshoot it? Why does a simple check for an update cause 2-3 timeouts when doing a ping? My knowledge of Linux is pretty low...

 

[sajunky]

He must find out what software is doing this update, where the server is located (LAN or Internet) and LAN topology. Do he use a hub or modern switch hub?

 

[Johnatan56]

Are you on an ADSL line and is the laptop uploading?
And do you mean the local network or do you mean that your internet connection becomes completely unusable?

 

[biometrics]

What speed is your connection?

Perhaps it's starting a large update download and saturating your connection.

 

[ponder]

Tell him to run netstat to monitor the traffic.

Dunno why anyone would want to run gentoo on old hardware as the compile times will kill you, Arch is a better alternative seeing as it uses binary packages.

 

[zll]

Thanks for the ideas guys. It turned out that part of the OS was corrupt as the hard drive was dying. Damn thing was 9 years old.