Here is the situation:

currently there are 5 servers running from one switch. 2 of those servers serve webpages, one of those two serves around 636kb/s IN and 80kb/s out. So quite a bit (bandwidth graphs here: http://www.unix66.co.uk/mrtg1/port-5.html)
The other server is hardly used.

The rest of the servers are used for counterstrike games so they have sporadic use in the evenings pushing the switch throughput to 2.5Mbps at times (http://www.unix66.co.uk/mrtg1/port-1.html) . The incoming line from the ISP is 10Mbps so it ought to be able to cope with the throughput even in the evenings, and the switch settings are all set to 10Mbps half-duplex.

The problem:
During the counterstrike games every 5 minutes or so they encounter a "flush error" and some major lag for about 10-15 seconds. On looking further into this it appears that when the server that serves the most webpages (see top) is turned off the counterstrike games no longer have that issue.

Can anyone shed any light on this at all? Is it a switch issue where the switch is being flooded with packets and can't cope so does something funny? Or is it that the other server is somehow affecting what is going on on the other ports? Is there any way to limit what happens across the switch for any of the ports. (Switch can be seen here: http://www.alliedtelesyn.com/product/8024)

Cheers for any info or help that can be provided.

James

Check your switch port interfaces for errors. If you find some it might be best to either put your switch interface on full-auto or hard set your switch interface & server NIC to the same setting i.e. 10-half duplex

If that doesn't work have your transit provider issue another cross connect and either have it plugged into a passive hub or use one of their switches. See if that makes a difference.

Finally if you are still having issues, perhaps your machine can't keep up.

Put them on separate VLAN's.
I have no idea how to do that on that switch.

Ah hah VLans. I had considered this route, however I'm not sure that several different VLans can use the same main line (port1). I think it requires using a tagged member of the VLan however I believe this only works if the port has something on the end of the line that is IEEE 802.1Q VLAN Tagging compliant. I would imagine a router is IEEE 802.1Q VLAN Tagging compliant wouldn't you, however I know that upstream of the ethernet cable there is another switch before that switch goes onto a router. I will have to look into this further and VLans could be the solution.

Cheers for the info guys. If anyone else has anything they would like to add I would be sincerely grateful.

James