Redis: weird protocol/network errors

I'm running Redis and connecting from Ruby using ezmobius's Redis gem[1].

Periodically (about once a day) I get a series of exceptions in my Rails app caused by Redis returning strange results.

They are often triggered by an exception such at this:

Redis::ProtocolError: Protocol error, got '3' as initial reply byte                         

or

Redis::ProtocolError: Protocol error, got '9' as initial reply byte                      

or sometimes

Errno::EAGAIN: Resource temporarily unavailable - Timeout reading from the socket

It usually requires a restart of my Rails servers to clear up the connection problem. I'm running Fedora Core 8, Rails 2.3.8, Redis gem 2.0.3. I've got the system_timer gem installed. Anybody got any ideas how I can stop these errors?

[1]Redis gem