i have 2 linux boxes, on centos 4.3 running a fairly new dlink network card. a second running fedora core 5, using onboard nvidia NIC. both feed into a dlink switch, recently chnaged from a linksys switch.

that then connects to a dlink di-604 router whihc then connects to a standard bell sympatico (canada) ADSL "modem". The damned thing is that under either linux system, weather it ben the centos fedora, bottable knoppix or ubuntu, the internet is slow, if i enter an IP it works isntantly but anyhting rquring a lookup is dead slow or times out.......any ideas, comments or questuions??

anyhting rquring a lookup is dead slow or times out
Looks like a DNS issue. Check if you're using the right DNS servers. If you've got a lot of LAN boxen it may be beneficial (speed) to make one act as a caching DNS. Try for instance Pdns: it performs well (timeout settings, parallel queries, use multiple DNSes), it's highly configurable, it's got a persistent cache, it allows you to advertise static local mappings too and on top of that it's not from ISC.