I’m having some issues with Ethernet connectivity with my Mac mini. I’m trying to get to the bottom of the issue before having the board swapped under Apple Care.

The issue I have been seeing is the network connection goes down sporadically while under load. I suspect the switch I use does not get along with the Mac mini, as the problem is evident when the Mac is connected to the switch but not directly to the router. No other devices in the network display such an issue while connected to the switch (ranging from AppleTVs to AV Receivers to PS4 to BD Players). The switch is unmanned, meaning there’s no logs to see what happens inside of it during the connectivity issue. I’ve tried different ports in the switch as well as cables to no avail. We’ve run through the resetting the PRAM with Apple over the phone and the issue is still there.

Anyways, I can see the entries in the Console.app when the connection is marked as down and then comes back up. What I’m curious about is the syntax of the entries when the connection comes back up:

Ethernet [AppleBCM5701Ethernet]: Link up on en0, 1-Gigabit, Full-duplex, Symmetric flow-control, EEE enabled, Debug [796d,2301,0de1,0300,cde1,3c00] 

The part I’m interested about is the last part Debug and what follows inside the brackets.

Any ideas as to what all that means?