downloads stalling using firefox, wget, etc
 

Hi all.
I have been trying to run some updates on my slackware laptop and after about 5 minutes the downloads stall and never recover. Sometimes I can restart them and it will finish but usually it never does. I checked my network and the 2 windows machines and the mac that are also on it have no problems. I have tried different cables, setting the NIC static and also directly connecting to the cable modem. Nothing seems to change the situation at all. Also it appears that the name resolution is really slow. Any help is appreciated, thanks in advance.

P.S. laptop is a compaq presario 2175.

If name resolve is slow I would define your ISP DNS values in /etc/resolv.conf

Brian

I did eventually try that and the speed improved a bit but the downloads are still stalling

No idea on the stalling, Is there any errors in the dmesg command or logs?

Brian

you could try a traceroute from your computer to the server to see if there are any problems. it also might just be the server itself - are you having the same problem with downloads from other sources?

or perhaps it can also be a problem with your isp.. just like ours.

Ok, I grabbed a 25 ft cable from work and that worked for the most part. I dont think it is the ISP as I have 2 windows machines and a mac and they both work fine on the web and DLing large files. I found that the NIC chip is a national semiconductor DP8315 and that it apparently has a problem with short cables and that can be fixed with an updated driver. My laptop used to have winxp on it and it worked fine then. My guess is the driver or use wireless/long cable.