General network error - SqlInternalConnection.OpenAndLogin

We are having some major issues with suspicious errors while using Biztalk
that we believe may be linked to network issues or possibly a bad NIC. So
we wrote a small app to continuously "ping" - really it issues a small
select against a table - the DB every 2 seconds. We had lots of errors
crop up doing this. In doing so seemed to narrow some issues down to
ADO.NET's pooling along with problems in teh network. Apparently if there
were network issues and the pooled connection got "hosed", the whole
connection was doomed and we'd receive errors "General network errors" on
the next attempt to use the hosed connection.
Now, we have disabled pooling and getting the below exception. Does anyone
know what normally causes this exception to occur out of the "OpenAndLogin"
method?
Kevin

Event Type: Error
Event Source: DatabasePing
Event Category: None
Event ID: 0
Date: 8/18/2004
Time: 6:04:35 PM
User: N/A
Computer:
Description:
System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: General network error. Check your
network documentation.
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OpenAn dLogin()
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection..ctor( SqlConnection
connection, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions)
at System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open()
at DatabasePing.DatabasePing._IssueSelect(String query, String
connectionString)
at DatabasePing.DatabasePing._IssuePing(Object stateInfo)
For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
"Kevin C" <kc@.noneya.com> wrote in message
news:erH94FfhEHA.4064@.TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> We are having some major issues with suspicious errors while using Biztalk
> that we believe may be linked to network issues or possibly a bad NIC. So
> we wrote a small app to continuously "ping" - really it issues a small
> select against a table - the DB every 2 seconds. We had lots of errors
> crop up doing this. In doing so seemed to narrow some issues down to
> ADO.NET's pooling along with problems in teh network. Apparently if there
> were network issues and the pooled connection got "hosed", the whole
> connection was doomed and we'd receive errors "General network errors" on
> the next attempt to use the hosed connection.
> Now, we have disabled pooling and getting the below exception. Does
anyone
> know what normally causes this exception to occur out of the
"OpenAndLogin"
> method?
>
.. . .

> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: General network error. Check your
The same connectivity problem that was screwing up your pooled connections
is preventing new connections.
David