High packet loss, ideas?

I'm noticing an interesting trend on my G4 733 Tower, I consistently get anywhere from 14%->30%+ packet loss when flood pinging my machine. All of my x86 machines get 0% packet loss. When I use my mac, I notice no apparent slowdown in the network, except that iTunes seems to moan and groan when adding networked files to my playlist.

I've experienced similiar issues when flood pinging an AirPort Express. Any idea what could be causing this high packet loss on the Mac while all my other machines have no problem keeping up with the flood of pings?

Other details:
I've tried two different network cables.
All of these computers are on the same network (802.11 a/b/g access point w/ 100 mb/s 4 port network switch.)
I was flood pinging from an IBM Thinkpad running debian linux on an 802.11a network.

Flood ping results from Mac G4, wired network:
--- 192.168.0.51 ping statistics ---
1004 packets transmitted, 750 received, 25% packet loss, time 3628ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.584/0.702/6.035/0.342 ms, ipg/ewma 3.617/0.920 ms

Flood Ping results from p200 running debian linux, wired network:
--- 192.168.0.50 ping statistics ---
4994 packets transmitted, 4991 received, 0% packet loss, time 3611ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.606/0.671/6.178/0.257 ms, ipg/ewma 0.723/0.661 ms

Flood Ping results from AMD based laptop running WinXP Pro on 802.11g network
--- 192.168.0.66 ping statistics ---
2939 packets transmitted, 2938 received, 0% packet loss, time 3620ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.973/1.172/8.027/0.620 ms, ipg/ewma 1.232/1.102 ms

Flood Ping results from AMD Athlon 750 tower running debian linux, wired network:
--- 192.168.0.1 ping statistics ---
4402 packets transmitted, 4401 received, 0% packet loss, time 2931ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.553/0.616/6.160/0.238 ms, ipg/ewma 0.666/0.621 ms

What's the packet size?

MacsWork said:

What's the packet size?

Click to expand...

I'm pinging with the default 56 byte packet size.

Another interesting thing I've discovered:

--- 127.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
619 packets transmitted, 500 packets received, 19% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.058/0.483/15.459 ms

I still get this packet loss when flood pinging localhost....hmmm.

sounds like a nic problem

fearlessfreap24 said:

sounds like a nic problem

Click to expand...

That does sound logical, but pinging 127.0.0.1 should completely avoid the nic, but yet I am still noticing packet loss there.

It doesn't avoid the nic I just never leaves the nic, or your mac for that matter.