Hello,
I have a conundrum for anyone who is good-natured enough to help me out. I just started using Fedora Core 1 as my main desktop computer, so I'm about as big a newbie as they come.

I'm experiencing inexplicably slow internet speeds, which apparently have nothing to do with a slow network. My laptop (running XP) gets ~300 Kbps download speeds from my campus network, but when I plug the same cable (from the same jack) into my linux box, I can barely manage *4* Kbps.

I've tested all of my cable: no problems there. I am also reasonably certain that my ethernet card (3com 3c9058-TX) is not the cause of the trouble: It worked just fine (very high network speed) before a reformat/reinstallation of FC1. After looking around online, I have a feeling that there may be some sort of conflict or module problem going on, but lack the knowhow to get any further than this.

While looking online for solutions, I ran into some people with similar problems, who said that adding the lines

alias net-pf-10 off
alias ipv6 off

to the /etc/modprobe.conf file would help. I've tried this, but there has been no change in network speed.

I've also run /sbin/ifconfig. Here's the output it's giving me:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:10:4B:C9:78:7F
inet addr:169.233.3.27 Bcast:169.233.3.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:66359 errors:1928 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:1928
TX packets:22656 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:12394297 (11.8 Mb) TX bytes:3107456 (2.9 Mb)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0xa800

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:4746 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4746 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3712808 (3.5 Mb) TX bytes:3712808 (3.5 Mb)

Unfortunately, I find myself completely at a loss as to what all this means. I'm thinking that the errors in RX packets are probably not good.

When I run /sbin/ethtool eth0, I get "No data available."

I've been working on this problem during all of my free time lately, but I can't seem to be making any headway. If I can't resolve this problem soon, I may very well have to go back to the world of microsoft until FC1 starts behaving. Thank you in advance for any help you can give!

It could also be that the link speed negotiation isn't syncing up for whatever reason. Though I can't help you on how to configure this in FC. Just an idea.
HTH
-S

Yeah...I find myself completely ignorant about how to do something like this. Any other people with ideas? I'm pretty desperate for some help.

Is there *anyone* out there who's able/willing to help me with this? I don't know what else to try!

ethtool or mii-tool are command line utilities to change a NICs settings.

If you don't have ethtool you may have miitool.

Also FC1 is obsolete now. Fedora is just about to release FC4.

4kbps is slow. You have the right module(driver) loaded for the network card?

Amazing....
The problem is solved, and I'm back to full network speeds. I shut down the computer, then removed all trace of network cards from the motherboard. I also deleted the network configuration for the now non-existant ethernet cards. I started up the computer, removed all configuratoin using Kudzu, and then shut down again. Upon reinstalling a network card, I was back to full speed! I figure there must have been some sort of conflict or hardward snafu, that was fixed by reinstallation. The really wierd part, is that I had tried this before, with no luck, before I started this thread. I'm puzzled, but happy!

Thanks to everyone!