I've been experiencing occassional network time-outs with the Intel Gigabit nic's (e1000) in Poweredge systems. I'm not sure if it's a hard or software problem but it occurs on different systems with Centos 4.2 and 4.3 and was wondering if there' s a workaround available like compiling an updated e1000 module or something.
I'd start by checking to make sure that the system is fully updated (bios, OS etc) and then check out linux.dell.com for driver packages, updates and things of that nature.