[bitfolk] [off-topic] Lenny Network Weirdness, a problem to think about if you're bored

I have just started working at a new office. I just re-installed a windows box to have Lenny on it. The box works fine. I noticed that my SSH sessions to computers within the company were hanging, then eventually timing out with a reset by peer message. It is actually afecting all networking, that's just what made me realise that the network sometimes "goes away". No one else is having these problems. To make progress I bought in my laptop and tried to use that, then suddenly found the same issue. I have plugged my laptop into a different port, one next to someone elses workstation with no effect. I have since been playing with things, looking through the internet and playing with ping. There are no entries in syslog/messages/dmesg about the NIC or network stack at, or around, the time when the network "disappears". Basically I lose all connectivity in terms of send/recv but ifconfig reports that the adapter is up and working. Both machines are running Lenny. My laptop has been stable for aaaaaaages, has never had problems with wired ethernet on multiple networks it's been hooked up to...and is even running a newer kernel to get some fixes for the wifi driver (not used, I'm on wired ethernet here) The box I just installed is a beast of a dell server and is using a vanilla Lenny install from CD with only a base system + Gnome so far. I have searched the interwebs and found the advice regarding tcp window scaling, this does not get rid of the problem on my laptop. I'm having a hard time finding anything that seems relevant to me. If anyone has seen this, or has an idea where to look I'd appreciate it. n