9 second ping lag unless I run tcpdump on RELENG_5

[William D. Colburn (aka Schlake)]

I have a RELENG_5 box on my desk.  Unless I run the tcpdump program, it
responds progressively slower on the network.  This seemed like the most
appropriate list to post this question too.

This morning, for instance, it had a 9 second ping response time from a
machine on the same network segment as it when I came into work.  As
soon as I typed 'tcpdump' on the freebsd box the ping time dropped to
nearly instantaneous.  I killed tcpdump and let it run for a while.
About a thousand seconds later it suddenly jumped to 1 second, then to 2
seconds.  As soon as I ran tcpdump again it dropped back to normal.

The uname ids it as 5.3-STABLE #14: Wed Oct 20 10:23:11 UTC 2004,
with a GENERIC kernel.  I did a new cvsup (along with a tcpdump because
otherwise cvsup fails) this morning and nothing new came across.

--
William Colburn, "Sysprog" <wcolburn at nmt.edu>
Computer Center, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/     http://www.nmt.edu/~wcolburn