udpsend problems

Hi all,
There was a problem reported back in June with a similar error message that I am seeing using the udpsend object
(here's the previous thread:
https://cycling74.com/forums/index.php?t=msg&goto=108665&rid=15&S=81549daa51bd68a5df22c0f9b8a455f8&srch=udpsend+problem#msg_108665O)

The error that I am getting is this:
"error: udpsend: socket method unsuccessful"

The previous post on this saw this error when sending too much data, and then crashes when saving. I'm getting this message based on time. I have a bunch of machines on a network doing some show control. The "master" controller sends out a message every 5 seconds via udpsend to the other machines to make sure they are still alive. I get this error message when the machine has been idle for several hours. The machine is set to never sleep and to never spin down. Once I get this error, the object is dead until I relaunch. The patch that it is in cannot be saved (nothing gets written/updated on the harddrive), and doing a "saveas" crashes max (as reported in the previous thread). Quitting also crashes Max after this message appears.

Any ideas on what could be happening?

Thanks,
David