On Wednesday 06 February 2002 04:10 am, you wrote:
> One of my boxes on the network is having extreme difficulty in
> communicating with the rest of the network.  If I do an ifconfig, I see
> upwards of half of the packets dropped:
>
>
> eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:02:E3:05:92:46
>           inet addr:10.0.0.1  Bcast:10.0.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
>           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
>           RX packets:1744 errors:967 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:2462
>           TX packets:12380 errors:32 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:64
>           collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
>           RX bytes:288515 (281.7 Kb)  TX bytes:16860881 (16.0 Mb)
>           Interrupt:10 Base address:0x8000
It looks like errors to me <not dropped packets>

>
> Now the network is just four boxes, no DNS, just host files and static
> IP addresses for three plus one laptop that uses DHCP (which isn't the
> box that is having problems).  My question is: how do I determine if I
> have a bad network card/driver versus a bad network configuration.  I

I would start by checking/replacing the cables. Then check/replace your hub. 
Maybe use different ports on your hub. My guess is a bad cable. 

> started digging around with some of the network tools to try to diagnose
> the problem but nothing popped up.  However, I am network-challenged in
> this area and something could be staring me in the face and I wouldn't
> know it.

If that gives you no relief then I would say try replacing the NIC in the 
offending box. And pay attention to the other suggestions that are bound to 
follow.