We've also hit this Intel Ethernet driver bug, even though we don't have IPv6 deployed. Linux will send MLD packets on bridged ports by default, triggering the

We've also hit this Intel Ethernet driver bug, even though we don't have IPv6 deployed. Linux will send MLD packets on bridged ports by default, triggering the Intel driver bug on Windows machines. With only two Windows machines saturating their Gigabit Ethernet connection whenever they went into standby, we managed to crash the university's switches big time (we're a group with our own VLAN within the university's network, so we make use of their network equipment). Naturally, because the issue only occurs during standby, and usually users don't log off thus preventing Windows from sleeping, we first hit the bug during the Christmas holidays (2013). The culprit hosts were all in use for just a couple of months. In the end, it took a couple of hours to reproduce this bug during working hours! We fixed it by using different NICs (we didn't want to rely on the Intel driver to be updated after a clean install; Windows Update doesn't have the fixed version), and by disabling MLD snooping on the Linux hosts, since we aren't yet using IPv6 anyways. This prevents the Intel bug from being triggered in our environment.