Funky arp problem

[Mike Lovell]

I have several Supermicro servers. Over the past about 2 months, a few 
of them have started being stupid when it comes to networking. On these 
servers, I reinstalled the OS (debian etch and *gasp* windows) and, 
afterwards, the box stops responding to arp requests. If I try to ping 
the server, I get a no route to host error. The arp tables show an 
incomplete for the ip address of the box. Funny thing is that if I then 
get to a console for the box and just generate any kind of network 
traffic, things then work. Any ideas on this? (and I don't really 
consider a cron to wget google every minute a solution). It has happened 
on a few different models of servers and across Linux and Windows. Thanks

Mike