DL360 Imbedded NIC Slowdown

[CA1058336]

We have an HP ProLiant DL360 with an integrated NC7781 Gigabit Server Adapter dual-NIC, running Win2K Server. A week ago the NIC started intermittently losing the network signal as if the cable had been unplugged (there is only one network cable attached, at 100Mbps). We feel we have eliminated the cable and/or anything upstream. Yesterday I upgraded the NIC driver to HP version 7.80.0.0, dated 6/19/04. Since then, the NIC has not failed, but I estimate that throughput has been consistently degraded by about 20%.

This server backs up other servers on the LAN via its attached tape library. I am estimating the amount of degradation in network throughput by observing both the realtime data streaming rate to tape (in Veritas Backup Exec 8.60) and the overall increase in time for the backup jobs. It isn't an issue with the tape library because I get the same reduced throughput when conducting a backup-to-disk, where the data source is on the LAN.

Has anybody run into this one. All help is appreciated.