Currently we have three Red Hat 8.0 web servers. The majority of my clients are running windows 2000 Professional. Each user must download a 18 mb file to run for a new application. It is taking them 2 to 3 mintues to download. THe linux servers are able to download the files from each other in about 4 sec. After some investigation i have found that WIndows NT 4.0 WOrkstation downloads the file in about 30 seconds and WIndows XP downloads the file in about 45 seconds. Are there any setting in apache or Linux that need to be made to handle the TCP/IP packets differently?

PLEASE HELP!!

Thanks in advance

Which raises the question: why do you think the download speed of the W2K clients could be improved on the servers?

If i place this same file on a Windows 2000 Server running IIS 5.0 the file downloads in about 4 sec.

But the Apache servers already send the file out in 4 sec, too. Else the servers could not download it in that time themselves.

Do you find that other protocols (e.g. FTP, SSH, SMB) are affected by this difference in download speed, too?

we currently are not permitting FTP to the servers. I wonder if Linux or apache needs to be tweaked to handle the files better to windows hosts. I don't think it is a browser issue. i have tried Mozilla on windows, and mozilla on my Linux Desktop.

HTTP download is the only acceptable method.

Well, but 18 MB in 2-3 minutes is just DSL speed. I have strong doubts that this can be fixed with tuning the Apache servers (who only need 4 secs between eachothers). I don't see any way you can avoid debugging your networking connections first.

the network connections are perfect.

How did you test them for throughput?