I wrote a very simple script to update the system, download the deb-multimedia key and tor key, and then download a few gpg keys for an old repo (the repo is no longer around, but the keys were just meant to test this script's ability to download and add them).

Script is here
Please ignore the last bits regarding key 886DDD89, I found, only after starting this, that key no longer existed on the server.
When run on my native system, it completes in a reasonable time with no problem. You can see the results from my native system here.
And the vm results here.

Both systems are running debian 7.5 wheezy. The networking on the vm in question is setup as a bridged adapter. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

How much memory did you allocate to the VM?

About 750Mb I believe. The issue isn't the vm running slowly, it's the downloading that is slow. I can run plenty of other things without any hiccup in performance, it's just download speeds in the vm are so low that it results in "server timeout"errors.

& you don't believe that it may be due to lack of virtual memory?

The reason I don't believe it is due to virtual memory level is because the VM runs fine otherwise. Any other command, tool, or whathaveyou runs as expected. It's just downloading with wget or apt-get update takes a long while, not in the sense that it takes ages to complete, but that the connection takes ages to go through. It doesn't seem like it'd be a memory issue.

I have run debian on physical systems with 256MB ram, and a 10/100 network card that was able to download no problem. This is running with 750MB and the equivalent of 10/100/1000 network card, so it shouldn't be experiencing these problems.

Maybe you use a very slow (or loaded) server? Have you tested what speed you get?
Here's one way http://lifehacker.com/how-to-test-yo...and-1364123567

Tried that wget test with the 100MB file, on both the vm and the physical computer (host?), and got a consistent 2.4Mb/s. Then just to add a comparison I ran apt-get update on the vm (which has only default sources setup), then I decided to do the same on the host computer (which has a lot of addition repos with the default in the sources). Results:

debian vm results from apt-get update
debian laptop results from apt-get update
They both accessed the debian servers at ftp.debian.org. So... I'm not sure where this leaves me.

Thanks for that connection speed info.

Can't help you on vertual environments and connections, hope you get it going.

You have helped me. Folks tell me I have a slow connection. Never seems that way to me. We ran on dial up with 4.6 kB/sec on a great day for a long time. Moved and have dsl now and it may be slow but it is blazing in comparison. Is compared to yours too. 300kB/sec +/- 30kB.

I could live with your 11. That less than 1 truly does suck.

My average download speed for day to day things is around 9-11Mb/s. I'm not sure why that shows the way it is, perhaps because it's only a few hundred kB so it didn't have time to get up to full speed? I was reading an article about it somewhere else today how smaller packages will download at a slower speed compared to larger ones, but that doesn't mean a small package will take longer.