Our 2900 has the same history as Bonnie's. SP2 caused rare
intermittent problems (once a week or so). Win 2003 SP2 included the
scalable network pack which was a seperate option which we never installed.
I did the same thing as Bonnie (reghacks and GUI disable of receive side
scaling, or RSS). We never replaced the MB but we did update the
bios/firmware/bmc and nic drivers. We have a 1900 w/ brodcomm nics that I
did the same thing to, but it never had problems.
-Devin
On Jan 29, 2008 8:34 AM, Miller Bonnie L. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
> On ours, the 2900 ran just fine from the previous summer ('06) until SP2
> was installed for WS03 last spring. Immediately after that, we started
> experiencing failures with the NIC. Everything was up-to-date, hardware
> tested fine, etc. Even with the Mb replaced (among other things--that was
> the last thing tried), it continued to fail and we finally installed a PCI
> Intel NIC that our Dell sales rep helped to get sent to us to resolve this
> case--It runs fine on that.
>
> Last time I tried setting it back to use one of the Broadcoms was around
> September when there were newer drivers, and there have been more newer
> drivers released since then, so I'd like to try again, just need to catch a
> window where it won't cause downtime for the kids if it starts crashing
> again. We also have a nearly identical 2900 box running at our other high
> school that does NOT have the same problems. Much more to that story, but
> I'll leave it at that for now.
>
> The Exchange server is a 2950 though, and the settings below have helped
> that one big time. We applied the changes to all 2950 and 2900 servers (all
> of our gen 9+ Dells) and things have been much better.
>
> -Bonnie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 2:22 PM
> To: NT System Admin Issues
> Subject: RE: Broadcom NIC problems?
>
> When one of our 2900s was delivered last year one of the on-board
> Broadcom NICs seemed largely dead, ended up needing a motherboard
> replacement. I'll think about mirroring the settings you're using
> below, though. Thanks for the tips.
>
> David
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Miller Bonnie L. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 12:22 PM
> To: NT System Admin Issues
> Subject: RE: Broadcom NIC problems?
>
> This sounds a LOT like the strange issue we had with our 2950 running
> E2k7 (can't just wipe and install x32) where Outlook would "hiccup" and
> lose connections to the server. Server appeared hung, but once logged
> on, was fine and users could reconnect. Updated firmware, drivers,
> Windows, Exchange patches, etc, and could not find a source. On the
> verge of calling PSS, but tried the chimney stuff first, and voila,
> haven't seen the problem since. We've turned it off for now on all of
> our 2900s and 2950s, and have seen great improvements in several servers
> where we probably didn't realize there were issues.
>
> On ours, I'm importing a reg file with the following
> -------------
> Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
>
> [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]
> "EnableTCPA"=dword:00000000
> "EnableRSS"=dword:00000000
> "EnableTCPChimney"=dword:00000000
> -------------
>
> And, I'm also setting RSS to disabled in the advanced properties of the
> Broadcom NIC (in device manager). A reboot after that and it's all off.
> Will probably try turning things back on one at a time when this issue
> seems to settle down more, but at this point, it still appears to be a
> problem for us on the latest drivers, etc.
>
> BTW--we have one 2900 server that was so bad we had to stuff an Intel
> NIC in the box after it continued to BSOD on Broadcom drivers and Dell
> had replaced all the hardware (we changed cables, ports, etc first).
> Has worked flawlessly since--hoping to try removing that NIC with the
> chimney off soon, but need to wait until mid-winter break when the kids
> are gone in case it doesn't work. Point being, it seems to rear its
> ugly head for us with the Broadcom NICs. YMMV
>
> -Bonnie
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jim McAtee [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 11:03 AM
> To: NT System Admin Issues
> Subject: Broadcom NIC problems?
>
> In the IP Chimney thread there was a link to an article that alluded to
> more general issues with Broadcom drivers in Win2k3.
>
> I'm seeing some issues with a Dell PE2950 that we recently put into
> service as a web server. I first set the sysetem up using Windows
> Server
> 2003 x64 and had serious network throughput problems. Even on the local
> network (100 Mbps switch) I was seeing no better than about 130 kbps
> throughput. This was (and still is) without the TOE enabled. I farked
> around with it, trying different drivers until I finally gave up and
> installed Win2k3 32-bit. Much better network speeds.
>
> But what I'm seeing is now is an occasional hiccup where a web page
> appears to take several seconds to load. This is actually a little
> reminiscent of the original problem, as it would appear that the network
> would experience varying speeds, with short periods of a couple seconds
> that were extremely slow.
>
> Looking at the page generation speeds, it's not the web or application
> server, as the pages take just a fraction of a second to generate.
> Everything points to continued networking problems. Web sites from
> other servers in the same web farm don't display this behavior, so it
> would seem to be something with the PE2950 and not the network itself.
> Anyone else seeing something similar? Suggestions for either a fix, or
> where to begin troubleshooting would be appreciated.
>
>
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Devin
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