lost connection with server

[dereck jones]

Please allow me to provide some more background to the problem.

THE SERVER
I have a central server, running Linux 2.6.18-128.el5 , Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS), PHP 5.x and MySQL 5.0.45. I have a small database which at the very most will only hold 2000 records. Throughout a 24 hour period I have scripts running as cron jobs which insert, update and delete records as and when required by the relative queries that are run.

THE CLIENTS
I have 12 PC's all running Windows XP along with Firefox for the browser. Each PC's browser runs a php script/web page which queries the servers database and displays around 300 records which are paginated over a number of pages.

I have two PC's on each of my six sites, each pair of PC's are using a broadband Internet connection to access to server.

THE PROBLEM
At random times throughout the day one or more of the remote PC's browsers will display a error message "Domain cannot be found" or "the server xxx.xom has take too long to respond. If I login to the PC remotely and click the "Retry" button, they reconnect and all is well until the next time.

I have read so much information on what the correct setting should be for the "php.ini" file, httpd.conf and the "my.cnf" SQL config file I am at a loss as to what the setting should be. Can anyone point me in the correct direction as to what the setting should be for running PHP and MySQL. I do know that this is somewhat an open endded question but any help would be great.

My current setting for the php.ini file are:
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Resource Limits ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

max_execution_time = 60
max_input_time = 60
memory_limit = 32M

[MySQL]
mysql.allow_persistent = On
mysql.max_persistent = -1
mysql.max_links = -1
mysql.default_port =
mysql.default_socket =
mysql.default_host =
mysql.default_user =
get_cfg_var("mysql.default_password")
mysql.default_password =
mysql.connect_timeout = 60
mysql.trace_mode = Off

My current setting for the httpd.conf file are:
Timeout 120
KeepAlive On
MaxKeepAliveRequests 200
KeepAliveTimeout 5

# prefork MPM
<IfModule prefork.c>
StartServers 8
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 20
ServerLimit 256
MaxClients 254
MaxRequestsPerChild 4000
</IfModule>

# worker MPM
<IfModule worker.c>
StartServers 2
MaxClients 150
MinSpareThreads 25
MaxSpareThreads 150
ThreadsPerChild 25
MaxRequestsPerChild 0
</IfModule>

My current setting for the my.cnf file are:
[mysqld]
set-variable=local-infile=0
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql
# Default to using old password format for compatibility with mysql 3.x
# clients (those using the mysqlclient10 compatibility package).
old_passwords=1

log_slow_queries
long_query_time = 1

query_cache_size = 40000

skip-name-resolve

[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid

Many thanks in advance for any help or advice you can give.
__________________
Keep safe and well.

Dereck