ftp session / NIC problem

I would appreciate some help with my ftp session which seem to terminate very abruptly and unexpectedly during a large file transfer on my internal network. The error messages (see below) seem to indicate that the problem lies with the network card.

Messages from syslog:

NETDEV WATCHDOG: eth0: transmit timed out

eth0: Transmit timed out, status 0000, PHY status 786d, resetting...

eth0: reset did not complete in 10ms

{ message repeats }

Can anyone suggest how I might proceed on solving this problem?

I am running Debian 2.4.18 and my network card is a VT-6103.

Thanks in advance,

xilana