Bug 17874

After upgrading to 4.0 from 3.4, I periodically see my network connectivity completely die for about 30 seconds or so (can't ping anything on the network, nothing can ping the machine), and I get a "vr0: watchdog timeout" message in my system log.  Several times the disconnection has been quite lengthy (30 secs to 2 minutes) and I get multiple (5-20) watchdog timeout messages in my system log.  The connection seems to restore itself after a certain time.  My network card is a D-Link 530TX.  I never had this problem under 3.4, so I'm assuming something with the new miibus-based drivers is causing this problem.

The problem is very intermittant; I first noticed it when trying to transfer large amounts of data over the link, but now it seems to occur even when moderate amounts of data are being transferred.

Other (possibly) relevant info: the card is connected to a 10/100 switch; the link light does not go off on the switch when the problem occurs.  The IP is configured via DHCP.  The traffic over the link is almost exclusively ftp and Samba traffic; the problem has occurred with each one seperately.

Although I have not tried to switch cards, the problem first started occurring after I upgraded to 4.0.

How-To-Repeat: Moderate to heavy traffic load on a card using a vr network driver.  Hard to repeat because of its unpredictability.