Network problems: [eth0] SW - Redhat 8.0

hi,
i maintain and run the server for my dept., it runs on RH8.0 .. i am having some problems witht he network... the network eth0 is fine upon a startup.. but after some time
ps ax gives me
880 [eth0] SW .. the process is paged out.. ifconfig still shows the interface, and /etc/initd/network status gives me eth0 running.
..
i cannot ping to any machine outside and even if i can there is a lot of package loss...

route takes a hell lot of time to show me my gateway and sometimes it fails to do a name look up because the nslookup times out.

can u please help me.. what is going wrong.. i think there is some problem with the sendmail services that i am running, but i cannot figure it out.
please help me out.

rogue

SW doesn't mean that the process is swapped out in this case, since it is a kernel thread, and they never have any resident pages in the ordinary meaning, since they live entirely in unswappable kernel space. All kernel threads are always reported with W.
I don't know why the NIC is failing on you, though. Maybe this is a case for the LKML? Try subscribing to it on www.kernel.org and see if they can solve it for you.