Well, I have the internet up and running at least, but it is slow as sin compared to the download speed I get on the same machine using WinXP. I checked my IP settings, and the subnet mask and default gateway are the same as in windoze.

So I suppose it might be some kind of driver issue or something...

Also, I tried ifconfig and no errors were reported.

Can someone help me? Getting desperate!

Thanks



p.s. I am running Redhat 7.2 on kernel 2-4-7.10 and Ximian Gnome desktop. (Ximian Rocks!)

Well, we need to know a little about the system. What kind of cable internet are you using? What drivers/modules are you using? How is it all set up?

Thanks for responding.

The connection is DHCP through shaw cable. The NIC is a Linksys pcmpc100 using the tulip module suggested on the linksys website.
Note that I was previously using the nek2000 driver, but switched hoping to resolve my problems (using Linuxconf)...but nothing changed...

Also I have it running through a linksys hub with my other Win machine, but since only one machine is ever on at once I suppose this can be cosidered a simple direct connection?

I think that is everything...

Does dmesg tell you anything about network troubles? Like troubles auto-negotiating or anything else. And what does the output of ifconfig say? Does it have an extreme high number of collisions?

Looking through the output of dmesg, the only line that looks off is this one:
"eth0: MII is missing!"


And ifconfig reports as follows:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:E0:98:7F:88:ED
inet addr:24.64.254.202 Bcast:24.64.255.255 Mask:255.255.252.0
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:338 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:398 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:170069 (166.0 Kb) TX bytes:82671 (80.7 Kb)

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:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0
RX bytes:2104 (2.0 Kb) TX bytes:2104 (2.0 Kb)

Notice there are 0 errors.

By the way...I just got an email from my ISPs tech support:


"Windows XP was designed to handle larger TCP packets and was optimized for a broadband connection. This is why your internet connection performance is much faster than when you are connected
via Linux.

If you have any additional questions please do not hesitate to contact us."


I am betting this is a load of crap, but I'd love to be able to prove it by solving my speed issue.

I agree that winXP finially is a product by windows to handle the TCP/IP stack, but dont forget that UN*X has been doing that for decades. What sounds like your problem is a browser issue. which one is your choice and what pluggings are you using. To actually test it out try downloading from FTP site from the command line and check speed then

What kind of identification methos does this Shaw Cable modem service require?? does it give you a computer name, or does it go by your hardware?
It could be that it takes loads of time to pass the authentication phase on each request to reach a site. This has happened t ome before, and it was just a slight misconfiguration of identification.


zLinuxz

First, to Corky:
I tried using ftp from the command line to a site that runs at light speed under WinXP...same problem, no difference.

zLinuxz:
Under windows, the settings are simply to automatically detect network settings....nothing special is required. Also it is DHCP.

Still waiting to see if anyone knows about the "MII is missing!" error from dmesg. Anyone know if this is related to my speed issues?

MII is Media-Independent Interface

Which version of the pcmpc100 card do you have?

Here is a list of advisable modules to use for each version:
card "Linksys EtherFast 10/100 Fast Ethernet"
version "Linksys", "EtherFast 10/100 PC Card (PCMPC100)"
module "pcnet_cs"

card "Linksys EtherFast PCMPC100 V3 Fast Ethernet"
version "Linksys", "EtherFast 10/100 PC Card (PCMPC100 V3)"
module "axnet_cs"

You should only be using the tulip module for the pcmpc200 card as far as I could see. If changing the module doesn't help you could look for any updates or bug fixes in the newer kernels.

Weird thing though I checked the sources and the "MII is missing" message is in both the axnet_cs and the pcnet_cs module but not in the tulip module. Maybe your kernel was smarter and did find the right module but then you forced it to use the tulip module.

Hmm. Well it was a good idea Mik, but...
Apparently my system was smarter than I am...although I tried to change to the tulip module using only linuxconf, my system is still using pcnet_cs anyway.
I never thought to do a simple lsmod...but it reveals that pcnet_cs is the module being used, which is apparently the correct one.

I just ran another test as well...man what a difference between WinXP and my linux setup. I was downloading from the same site at 250K using Windows and 25K using Linux.

I noticed one strange thing though...I have an applet running tracking my net load, and at 25K/s the applet made it appear as though this was 2/3 of my network capacity. This seems strange...might this reveal something about the problem? Maybe the system thinks it is only a 10Mbps connection instead of 100Mbps?

The kernel you are running isn't that old. But it might be worth a try to try a newer kernel. I couldn't find anything specifically about the pcnet_cs driver in the changelogs. But they mention many times about updating network drivers. The 2.4.18 change log also mentions "Add MII ethtool interface and change several drivers to support that". I don't know if that will solve anything for you but it might be worth a try.
Looks like they have a pcnet32 driver in the 2.5 kernels. Maybe you could try one of the 2.5 kernels see if you can match the speed of Windows XP.

Maybe you would want to read this since it's a pretty similar problem:

http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/lin...01.1/0012.html

Thanks for the input Mik!

I tried a few of the 2.5 kernels, but none would operate 100% correctly for me (yes, I know the 2.5 kernels are only development ones...)
So just for the hell of it I tried the 2.4.18 (latest stable). It must have a more recent version of pcnet_cs as well. Now I'm cookin!
WinXP can bite me! Don't need it for anything now.

Thanks again to everyone for the help.