I recently set up a WinXP Pro - RedHat 9 dual boot system which is connected through a Realtek NIC (PCI) to my college network via DHCP.

In WinXP Pro, the internet connection is super-fast - I'm getting download speeds of anything up to 4 Mb/sec.

However, with RedHat 9, despite the internet connection working, it is super-slow! I mean, downloads averaging 3 Kb/sec! The network card is displayed as eth0 and I have done no configuration of this device - is there anything special I need to do in order to take advantage of this great connection in Linux?

Many thanks

Maybe get a better nic card, from a name-brand company? Like 3Com, Intel, Cisco, someone we've heard off?

check dmesg if there is any error messages such as
compression modules not found!
things like that
Please gave further info

Before you start changing settings on the linux machine, send an e-mail to the network administrator. He may have to set up a second account for your linux machine. It depends on how "locked down" everything is at your school. He may just need to be informed that you are dual booting so he can assign you some bandwidth, or set the account up using the mac address of your NIC, with a better password.

If I was network administrator at a school that is how I would set it up. The default would be one account per student; with logs for download activity; and dynamic assignment of bandwidth for each account. That way if you are a hog, I can shut you down to something more reasonable.

I would also have really slow connections to unregistered machines--or machines which have duplicate registrations. Why? I don't like "war drivers". I consider them thieves. If one works fast and the other one doesn't, the guy may be really good. My normal set-up would pretty much nuke both of them, because I would want to hear an explanation from you.

You may want to give both machines the same name. And set up the machine to report the same things your XP box does on login--that is in your browser settings. When you check your /etc/hosts file you should find entries for the school network (domain). If you don't, and you are running X-windows (Desktop), go to the menu and look for the network configuration gui-tool, it is pretty straight-forward. Most of the entries are going to be the same as the entries in your windows box.