I too am having my OS drop off my hardwired network. I do not have Dropbox installed on my computer. I do have a number of
security cameras on my network. I leave a window in my browser (Firefox) showing my OS all of the time. At the moment I
have my OS in “disabled” state while I work on my sprinkler system. After a few days the OS window will display “network error”
at the bottom. If I try to refresh the screen the connection times out. A power cycle returns everything to normal.
Everything on my network is connected through a Dell PowerConnect 7048P switch. It is my understanding that with an Ethernet
switch devices that are not the destination of a packet do not see the packet. Any device attached to a switch will only
see traffic that is addressed to it. This is not like an Ethernet hub.
Thus my OS should not see the traffic generated by my security cameras. It should not matter if Dropbox is installed unless
it is scanning your local network for some reason.
An interesting feature of my switch is a feature that allows monitoring any port. It can direct a copy of all traffic on
a specific port to another designated port. Thus you could watch all traffic from any source that goes to the OS port
using something like WireShark. Running WireShark on a host computer with the intent to watch the OS traffic will only
capture the host computer traffic to the OS. You would miss any rogue communication. I have never used this feature
so I can’t say how well it works.
Ray: this is the OS that you just sent me (thanks). I got the Ethernet board that you recommended and wired it up with
no problems.