Ok, here is the deal, I have a network card with the following specs:
RTL8029AS
89253T1
Realtek
10/100Mbit
Alright, now that you know that, know that it works on the internet, but only at downloads of up to about 10k/sec. This is EXTREMELY slow! I have an ISP that gives me a cable connection. The routing map goes like this:
ISP
Cable Modem (Linksys)
Microsoft Wireless/Wired network router. (Using wired router.)
My Redhat Linux 9.0 machine.

Here is what I find so strange. When I connect to the internet from the other machine I have, which is a Windows XP machine, I can get download speeds EVERY TIME, that are in the 150k/sec. - 200k/sec.. range.

Help me please! I'm wondering what the problem is, and I've been wracking my brain for weeks over it.

Oh, and here are my system specs.
400mhz celeron
384MB SDRAM
Geforce 2 MX 64MB RAM
Sound card
Network card (see above)
keyboard ( you probably)
mouse (don't need )
monitor (to know these)

Thanks in advance!
-Aterxerxes

Might have something to do with the brand of router. Try without the router just so you can rule out the router not being the problem.

If you really have a RTL8029 ethernet card then it is a NE2000 compatable which is only 10mb not a 10/100mb card. You can verify the chipset using the cnsole command lspci or by viewing the output of dmesg.

Check the output of the console command
/sbin/mii-tool to see if the card is configured for full duplex.

http://www.realtek.com.tw/products/p...aspx?modelid=3

Still, even a 10mb/sec card should easily saturate the cable modem. Some things to try, easiest first...

1) Check output of 'dmesg' command to see startup log. Near the end the eth0 interface comes up. On my system it tells me its 100Mb/s full duplex.

2)Run '/sbin/ifconfig'

(any errors or dropped packets?)

3) run 'ping <your gateway IP address>'

I get a round trip of about 0.6ms through a switch to a 10m/b NIC on the router box.

4) As suggested, also try the direct connection to the cable modem, if possible.

5) Time a big file transfer between the Linux box and the gateway (assuming you have some way of doing this, e.g. samba).

6) Swap the NIC in the Linux box.

Ok, I tried running without the router, and I got no activity. I think that that would be a problem with configurations, so I tried maroonbaboon's idea for ifconfig, and Lo and Behold! ... well, just take a look:
RX packets:7009 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:628
TX packets:3354 errors:16 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:32
collisions:272 txqueuelen:100
Also, let me acknowledge that I am a very big Newbie in the linux field, but I'm learning.
Thanks for all of the replies, and thanks again in advance!

-Aterxerxes

I still think you might be running at half duplex instead of full duplex. Make sure the NIC is setup for auto negotiation too.

You cut off the last line of ifconfig. What interrupt is the NIC using?

What does the output of mii-tool say?

What is the model number of the router?

Ok, here's the full ifconfig output:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:4F:49:07:702
inet addr:192.168.2.15 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1125 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:130
TX packets:1124 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:419862 (410.0 Kb) TX bytes:156841 (153.1 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xe400

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:7625 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:7625 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:519972 (507.7 Kb) TX bytes:519972 (507.7 Kb)

and the mii-tool output :

SIOCGMIIPHY on 'eth0' failed: Operation not supported
no MII interfaces found

Thanks again in advance!

-Aterxerxes

I suppose there could be a software/configuration problem behind the errors, but I'm not cluey enough in this area to know where to look. Although I'm thinking maybe your broadcast address should be 192.168.2.255 rather than 255.255.255.255.

Possible hardware problems include bad cable, bad connectors, bad NIC, NIC badly seated in slot or an interrupt problem. Running 'cat /proc/interrupts' might shed some light on that.

I really would like to say that I am grateful for the help that I have been given from everyone. I wonder if you could let me know if my observation is correct.

I think that it is probably faulty software at work, because I have a second computer in our home that works at just about double - triple the download speed, and can access web pages at about 1.2 times the normal speed.

Here is the cat /proc/interrupts output:

CPU0
0: 86337 XT-PIC timer
1: 211 XT-PIC keyboard
2: 0 XT-PIC cascade
8: 1 XT-PIC rtc
10: 0 XT-PIC usb-uhci
11: 57627 XT-PIC eth0, nvidia
12: 27963 XT-PIC PS/2 Mouse
14: 11172 XT-PIC ide0
15: 10254 XT-PIC ide1
NMI: 0
ERR: 0

By the way, what is the cat program for?

I know I sound like a broken record, but thank you in advance, and for the help so far!

-Aterxerxes

To rule out Redhat as a possiblity. Download Knoppix and burn it on a 700 MB CD. Connect to the same server and see if the download speed is better. If it is than its something wrong with Redhat.

The cable modem could be going. Buy or borrow a cable modem from a friend and set it up to your ISP's specs and see if it makes a difference. If the speed didn't get better than it could be your NIC,the router is going, or you have bad cable lines.

If all else fails, buy another NIC and see if that helps. NICs don't cost too much these days. One gigabit NIC almost cost as much as 100 Mb NIC.

You can try going into your BIOS and set IRQs for each device so that your video card is not sharing the same IRQ with other devices in your system. You could also disable COM and USB ports if you are not using them at the time.

The bash utility cat is used to print file contents to the stdout or to your terminal with out going into an editor like vi. tac is like cat but it prints the file contents in reverse or starting from the end of the file and stopping at the start of the file.

Suggestions:
You should change the broadcast address if not already so.
Try disabling Plug and Play in the motherboard BIOS
Get the NE2000 diagnostic utility and see what the card is configured for.
http://www.scyld.com/diag/

As last ditch effort you can download the DOS configuration/diagnostic utility from Realtek's website. You will need copy the utility to a DOS boot floppy disk. (If your PC still has one)

Something else you might try is to set up your networking interface manually. Does RH have some sort of wizard or control panel for that? Or command called netconfig or netcfg or something?

The fact that your broadcast address is wrong (shown in ifconfig output) indicates some sort of problem in the negotiation between your linux box and the router. Running 'arp' or 'route' should tell you your router address. Say it's 192.168.2.254. Then you need to set in your wizard or whatever (write down the original values so you can undo your changes)...

IP address 192.168.2.100 (that 100 is just randomly chosen).
gateway address 192.168.2.254
broadcast address 192.168.2.255
netmask 255.255.255.0

Then restart the interface, either in the wizard or, as root:

# ifconfig eth0 down
# ifconfig eth0 up

At present you are probably using 'dhcp' which is supposed to get all this stuff automatically from the router. Setting a 'static address' as above is less convenient but there is less to go wrong.

This is a bit of a long shot, but might be worth trying before some of the other good but maybe less easy suggestions.

Speed Test

105.5 kilobits per second
Communications 105.5 kilobits per second
Storage 12.9 kilobytes per second
1MB file download 1.3 minutes
Subjective rating Mediocre

Just thought that you might be interested in this. This is from Networld.com As you can see, my speed sucks. Help! Oh, and I am really an NewB, so please explain things step by step if possible. Thanks again in advance.

-Aterxerxes

It's a bit hard to give very specific advice as different distributions have different ways of doing system admin type tasks. I'm guessing you have some sort of 'Control Centre', like in Windows, where you can configure your network interfaces.

Anyway, try running the 'arp' and 'route' commands and posting the output. This should give some info about how you are connected.

arp output :
Address HWtype HWaddress Flags Mask Iface
192.168.2.1 ether 00:50:F2:CB:81:C2 C eth0
route output :
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.2.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 * 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
default 192.168.2.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
Thanks for sticking with me through all of this maroonbaboon.

-Aterxerxes