Intel NIC ARP problem

[Ivan Voras]

I have a strange problem with a PRO/1000 EB NIC (card=0x109615d9
chip=0x10968086) built into the motherboard (5000X chipset) that manifests
itself in NIC stopping responding to ARP packets requesting its
address while in Windows XP, after being rebooted from FreeBSD
(dual-boot).

The sequence is:

** cold boot (after the power has been disconnected from the PSU) into
WinXP: NIC works on WinXP
** reboot into FreeBSD: NIC works
** reboot into WinXP: NIC doesn't respond to ARP
** reboot into FreeBSD: NIC works
** reboot into WinXP: NIC doesn't respond to ARP
** cold boot into WinXP: NIC starts working again

I found the cold boot resolution by searching the net, apparently it's
a semi-known problem:
http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=7837 - my
motherboard isn't the one mentioned on this page but they share the
same chipset (Intel 5000X - this is a Xeon-based workstation).

I confirmed that it's an ARP issue by two things:

- computers with a large ARP timeout can access the machine while
the ARP entry is cached at their side
- connecting a laptop via crossover to the machine and using arping
clearly shows that ARP is responding until reboot from FreeBSD to
WinXP.

This is a workstation for developing and testing cross-platform
software so rebooting between operating systems is common. Any ideas?

Software involved:

- FreeBSD 8-CURRENT amd64
- WinXP SP3 i386
- For WinXP, tried both the drivers from the motherboard maker (12.4)
and the newest available on Intel's web site (13.2.8)

dmesg, etc. are available.

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