Most of the below is stuff I don't know anything about, but do the
following two points cover it or is the "layer 3 switch" part the
critical thing?

1.  The problem is with a W2K server, although we do have a number of
Novell servers also.

2.  The box turned out to have THREE NICs, they have now removed the two
10/100's and set the gigabit one to manually negotiate at 1000 full duplex.

> From: Douglas Smith 
> We had this problem where the duplex/speed settings were messed up
> between the layer 3 switch and the Novell server NICs (I have also seen
> this happen with Windows 2000 servers also).  The chief symptom was that
> email would take 45 minutes to open if the PC was on a different
> backbone than the Novell server as was the case with most of our users
> including the Executive Director and the Deputy Executive Director.
> The solution is to open up Monitor on the Novell server under LAN/WAN
> drivers and checking the line speed and duplexing (it varies between
> different NIC drivers).  Then check the switch and see what it is set
> to.  Short-term (unless you want to reboot the Novell server), change
> the setting on the switch to match that of the server.  Long term
> (assuming you have 100 meg switches), modify the Novell server to force
> 100 megabit full duplex and set the switch to 100 megabit full duplex
> (do not use auto-negotiate).  I do this with our Windows servers on the
> 100 megabit backbone.  Also if you are using Broadcom cards on the
> server (Q57 or B57), make sure that you use version 2.38 or later.
> - Doug.
> In article , 72322.1016
> {at}compuserve.com says...
>> EEEEW!!!
>> 
>> Are you saying that if it doesn't auto-negotiate properly, then after
>> that it will get it right SOME, but not ALL of the time?!?!?
>> 
>> 
>> On Mon, 31 May 2004 14:45:43 -0500, John Cuccia 
>> wrote in message :
>> 
>> >On Mon, 31 May 2004 12:30:58 -0700, Ellen K.
>> > wrote:
>> >
>> >>Well, then that can't be the problem, because the server stays on.
>> >
>> >Yes it stays on, but if it doesn't auto-negotiate properly the only
>> >time (as far as I know) it tries, then the intermittent problems you
>> >describe can and do occur.
>> 
>> 

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