Thought: One thing that may be a good idea is to capture a tcpdump trace of these happenings, specifically on (4), sudo tcpdump -w ssh-log.tcp port ssh Will write out all the packets involved to ssh-log.tcp. You can then see what was dumped out with tcpdump -r. If you email me the ssh-log.tmp I'll have3 a look for you as well. Cheers, aid thanks! someone else (wisely?) questioned the reliability of the Asante driver for the Ethernet card on (4), as its apparently a mite old ... although "on the surface" its working, "under the hood" it's suspect with OSX >= v10.3 ! That said, I've ripped out the card and am off to buy a "modern" replacement and update to latest drivers ... Once installed, I'll try again. if no joy, then I'll trouble you for some godlike analysis of tcpdump output (yech!) thanks, richard _______________________________________________ darwin-kernel mailing list | darwin-kernel@lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Archives: http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/darwin-kernel Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.