OS-dependent ping-packet-counts

Hi,

today I got a bit confused about some ping-actions with two PCs:

Machine 1:
- Hardware: Dell Optiplex
- OS: based on Mandrake 8.2 (modified)

Machine 2:
- Hardware: Dell Optiplex
- OS: SuSE Linux 9.2 Professional

----

- The used hardware is exactly identical!
- Network speed is 100 MBit / Full Duplex


Then I do a flood-ping to another machine in our network
("ping -f TARGETIP -s 500") on each system at the same time.

When I stop these processes after 10 seconds and compare the given output,
I can see that the Mandrake system sends and receives much more packets than
the SuSE system. For example:

Mandrake: 2704 packets transmitted, 2688 received
Suse: 672 packets transmitted, 670 received

I tried some other hardware-types (another Dell, IBM, Termtek, Elitegroup)
but it's always the same: the Mandrake-like client sends and receives more
packets.

Has anybody an idea where I could search to get a reason for this behavior?
Maybe it's just a normal thing, but I need to prove it.


Thanks a lot,
Thomas Schulte