thanks for the suggestions guys.. have managed to fix the problem by replacing the NIC with a spare...
I still don't know *why* is suddenly starting running slowly (or thinking it was only 10mb) but I remembered that before I'd moved the machine to the other room I'd also done an dist-upgrade.. and there was a new kernel.. i tried booting back to the old kernel but that didn't fix things.. so not sure whether even that was a problem..
anyways.. its now got a 8139 based card in there and all is well again...
seeing as this is the backend server for my mythtv system.. was getting antsy cos I couldn't watch TV.. lol
thanks again guys.. and I hope your suggestions point others in the right direction for finding out possible problems..
Cheers
Craig
We have some switches that a few ports don't like to work with certain network cards. Change the port and all is well.
And it is possible that one card will work better (higher signal levels) when there is a poor connection at one point in the chain. I have been screwed up when a spider had used a jack as a home and the old cob webs had left a thin coat on the contacts.
-- Robin Laing
