Large add/replace fails with I/O error

[John Dalbec <jpdalbec@cc.ysu.edu>]

I'm currently using the RedHat RawHide openldap-2.0.19-1 package.
I have several groupOfNames classes in my LDAP directory.  I am trying to
rebuild them automatically from an SQL database by replacing the "member"
attribute.  This works fine for most of them.  However, one of them fails,
apparently because there are too many members/too much data for OpenLDAP to
handle in a "replace" command (16000+ members, 750K ldif file).  
Using Net::LDAP, I get the "I/O error" code (1) and the message "Connection
reset by peer".  Using ldapmodify, I get:
 
modifying entry <...>
ldap_modify: Can't contact LDAP server

ldif_record() = 81

If I reduce the number of member: entries to 3396 or fewer, I don't have any
problems.  Is this a bug?  A limitation of the LDAP protocol?
I was able to load the member list by using replace to build the first entry and
adding the remaining entries in groups of about 3000.  Still, I'd prefer not to
have to automate that process just for the one group.
Thanks,
John