These timeout issues are actually linux kernel related (see i.e. here). To get rid of those issues, disable scatter/gather offloading (just execute 'ethtool -K <iface> sg off' ; replace <iface> by your interface name like eth0). But transmission speed will suffer !   With some optimizations the timeout issues also disappear. Dealing with 2.5G traffic is quite a burden on the CPUs! Use jumbo frames.   I am using the following content in /etc/rc.local to bind t