Can too much traffic cause "Not Connected" message to pop up?

I have a small isolated network of 9 Win2K Server Machines and 4 XP machines
all talking to a SQL Server machine. The network is a 10 Meg network...

The 4 XP machines will say that the network is dropping off then a few
seconds later, it hops back on and starts working again...

When we monitor the traffic there is about 200-600 Packets per second.

It seems as though the XP machines don't like it and maybe see too many
collisions and drop the network connection. The server machines seem to be
fine and don't drop.

When we remove some of the traffic, the XP machines are fine.

Is there something in XP I can set to keep the NIC from dropping?

Thanks,
Scott<-