I have a network consisting of
- a GBit switch
- a WIFI access point (DLink DWL-G700AP), connected to the switch
- a Windows XP machine hooked to the WIFI access point
- a Linux machine with 100 Mbit NIC, connected to the switch
- a ADSL modem, connected to the switch
The Linux machine runs Samba and a VDR (video disk recorder). The ADSL modem is running a DHCP server.
Overall everything works fine. However, the XP machine occasionally suffers from an unstable network connection. Symptoms:
- Ping timeouts, both to a well reachable host on the internet and to the Linux machine, typically one to five consecutive timeouts during a ping -t.
- Hanging web server requests in Firefox, reload usually fixes the problem.
- A TCP video stream (MPEG-2 SD material, 2 to 5 Mbit/s) from the VDR freezes in the VLC media player, or does not even start properly. VLC reports dropped frames.
I have tested with another XP machine, this one does not show the problems. Therefore I suspect the cause within the problem XP machine.
I have done these things to debug the problem:
- Restore the TCP stack configuration with netsh: no help
- Check the network traffic with MS network monitor: no "strange" traffic
- running iperf between XP and Linux: up to 20 Mbit/s sustainable traffic
During the iperf tests i noted sort of a slow start behaviour, sometimes it took up to 10 sec. to ramp up the traffic.
What else can I do to look for my problem cause?
