Ever since May 2005 I've had periodic network issues, and I've worked on narrowing down the cause of this, and it deffinitely looks like it's the BOINC client.

First time I experienced this was around end of May 2005 - while downloading the latest app from BURP my computer kept switching between "A network cable has been disconnected" and connection being re-established. As the app download had finished this disappeared. But it re-occured next time BOINC downloaded a new version the the BURP blender app.

Since then, LAN board has been replaced, router has been replaced, cable, ADSL modem, computer including yet another LAN board has been replaced - and several upgrades of BOINC. The problem has remained - and gotten worse, and now not only affects BURP downloads but several other projects.

At my secondary host the LAN board has been replaced as well.

If I shut down BOINC on all hosts the issue does not appear.

The most puzzling part of this is, when the issue begins on one host it seems to affect the others on the LAN. So if for example the secondary host is downloading the newest PrimeGrid app and begins this flickering (which by the way makes it very hard to get the file downloaded), my primary host begins to flicker as well. Last time this happened, I copied the file in question from my primary host to the secondary, and the flickering stopped.

I've never experienced this with any other transfers/connections.

Earlier it didn't happen very often, so I figured I could live with it - and it did seem to be only with one or two projects - but now it happens several times a day, and I've noticed it getting slowly worse with the increasing amount of projects I participate in.

I haven't seen anyone else reporting similar problems which has made me hold back from reporting this - but as I can't seem to find any other reason for this, and given all the hardware replacements, I think it's about time to report it. I know the source of the problem might still be somewhere else, but I've been monitoring this for a long time now, and I believe that it is more than just a coincidence that BOINC transfers/connections is the only occurance in common for these incedents, that it would be worth investigating the source code. I don't know if it's possible to replicate the issue.

Affects other machines on the LAN?! Strangest problem ever...

I know ;) That's why I wanted to monitor it for a long tie to be sure before I reported it