[Samba] Connection To Server Dropping Intermittantly

[John Mazza]

I am troubleshooting a strange issue...

Current setup is 12 PCs accessing a Samba box.  Network was recently changed to 
"security=DOMAIN" to authenticate to a Windows 2000 PDC via a VPN tunnel.  Users can login 
fine, but intermittently we are getting a "Network path not found" message at the clients, 
especially when they attempt to write. 

When connecting to the server by <servername>\<share>, we see the server go "offline" and 
"online" constantly, and see these same issues when connecting via <ip address>\<share>, 
but to a somewhat lesser extent.  This is a pretty critical problem for the office that 
this is installed in, as they share an Act! database and mount their "my documents" folders 
from the server.  Even momentary glitches in connectivity result in corrupted databases.  

My guess is that we are dropping packets on the VPN link back to the DC, and that is 
causing Samba to deny access from time to time, then later it comes back when a successful 
authentication request happens. Does this sound reasonable, or is there something else we 
need to look at here? 

Has anyone seen this issue before?