[GLLUG] Strange Switch behavior

[gholbrook@voyager.net]

I've got a Cisco 5000 series switch at one of my locations, and I
added a Linux bridging firewall to it.  I am running bridging
firewalls at two other locations with <HEAVY> loads, and no problems
at all.  Well...for some reason at this particular location, my
network went to crap.  If I pinged the switch it would frequently time
out.  So I took the firewall out of the loop.  Still though, timeouts
on pings.  As soon as I SHUT THE MACHINE DOWN instead of simply taking
it out of the network loop...the network returned to normal status.

WTF!  The switch didn't report anything strange, and I had it logging
at debug level to my terminal session.