Originally posted by: djw

I have an excruciating problem with a couple of AIX hosts that seem to periodically "get lost" or very slow in their ip networking and I cannot figure this one out.

Both machines have both a management lan and production lan ethernet connection way behind firewalls (but still with outbound internet connections).  

Occasionally every few weeks we first notice that we can no longer "see" these hosts when looking for xdmcp (cde) desktop connections - that is the first tip-off.  Then other types of connections become slow and fail to these hosts even thought they are lightly loaded.   Either a reboot or time seems to resolve it somewhat.

I find no issues in logs or errpts.  Diagnostics on the hardware or adapters shows nothing wrong on either host.  Basic network debugging seems to show nothing either.

I am interested in any suggestions as to where to look.

Originally posted by: j.gann

questions to ask yourself:

- when did it start?

- what was changed before it started? (network, os, clients, etc.)

- do other os hosts in the same network show the same symptom?

- does symptom persist if you remove the firewall rules and temporarily enable unlimited communication for a selected host?

If you have a clue about network protocol analysis an iptrace during both non-occurence and occurence of the symptom will be the most promising approach.

don't bother to answer these questions to me though, I'm just giving some guidance.

jg