I normally never do this because Linux never requires a reboot. Unless... The kernel is changed/recompiled/patched/upgraded.

Thats what I did. I got a little bit annoyed by the high amount of initial connection failures the last two months.

No idea if it improves the situation, it may actually worsen .. So lets see... Can I easily go back to the old situation if necessary? Yes I can

For ppl who have more interest (doubt it, but ah well ); http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2012/0 ... -tcp-f.php

* this action btw, has nothing to do with the incident Sunday evening. That was a failure of the data center backbone facility and had nothing to do with the servers. This can occur again, for some reason the traffic is highly increased on the backbone the last days. Rumors suggest it has something to do with the closure of MegaUpload and some other major traffic generating websites / torrent sites. The closure of those Internet facilities caused a global effect and all this lost 'activity' is now looking for a new home. How much effect had these closures anyway? Well, -gigantic- .. http://ddos.arbornetworks.com/2012/01/t ... -effect-2/

From the mouth of a linux noob, does the kernel handle networking? If not, how can this effect connection stability, possible package loss, and so on (just curious) ?

Eehhmmmm

Not get this too complicated right away; but yes it does...

(example; http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/openso ... oughput/62 )

Recent changes in network handling; http://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges#h ... bffb37c610