How can I best see where packets are dropping on a network interface?

Solution Verified - Updated -

Issue

  • A single interface, or an interface within a bond is dropping packets as visible within the output of ifconfig:
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00  
          inet addr:X.X.X.X  Bcast:X.X.X.X  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:9514004 errors:255 dropped:255 overruns:0 frame:255
          TX packets:3240402 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:5761535684 (5.3 GiB)  TX bytes:873500630 (833.0 MiB)
          Interrupt:20 Memory:f1600000-f1620000
  • How can I determine why these packets are dropping on a variety of drivers and interfaces?

Environment

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

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