When a driver bug or a malfunctioning feature hangs the card, all traffic in and out stops while it restarts.
Why Driver bug, malfunctioning offload feature → Effect The NIC hangs and restarts (a few seconds) → On screen Everyone on that server freezes together and then teleports or disconnects
Check and alert on “transmit queue … timed out” and “Link is Down” entries in the kernel log, update drivers and firmware, turn off the problem feature (such as an offload).
On the graph
Gap then burst · Server packets sent/received
Where to look
Search the kernel log with dmesg for “NETDEV WATCHDOG … transmit queue N timed out”, driver resets, and “Link is Down” or “Link is Up” entries, and check the server’s packets sent and received at those times
Confirmed if
At the time of the freeze, the kernel log has a transmit queue timeout or link down/up entries, and packets sent and received drop to 0 for those few seconds
Ruled out if
Kernel log clean and the switch-side port fine: a stall in the game server process (“Server GC stop-the-world pause,” “Deadlock”) or “Network equipment failover”
Check with
Infra tools (no game code needed)
Sources
net/sched/sch_generic.c (Linux v6.12)Linux kernel When a transmit queue stalls, the kernel watchdog logs “NETDEV WATCHDOG … transmit queue N timed out” and calls the driver’s reset function