Hi. I'm having a very strange networking problem. At first, my computer wasn't detecting my school's network at all. However, I updated the dhcp, and now it connects. However, it is REALLY slow. It will get fast sporadically, for a few seconds, then slow to a crawl. Additionally, I hooked it up to my other computer, and manually assigned it an IP. When I tried to ping the other computer, a few packets would go at normal speed, and the rest would take a really long time, or not arrive at all. Any ideas?

My specs:

FC3 (it's not updated, because up2date doesn't work; it's too slow. it times out)

Chaintech ct-skt600 motherboard --> also, a weird note, which is perhaps relevant: in the motherboard specs, it says this for the LAN: "Supports 10/100 mb fast ethernet with external via vt6103 phy." external? the ethernet is built in. additionally, the network configuration utility sees it as a via vt6102 rhine II. Is this significant?

athlon 2700 xp

250 gb sata hd

512 mb ram

generic geforce4mx

BTW: I read the other slow networking problem. I'm a total n00b, so correct me if I'm wrong, but do you get to ifconfig by typing "ifconfig" in the terminal? Because if so, it says a command with that name does not exist. So I dunno.

try
/sbin/ifconfig
and post teh output. It might be a networking issue on the campus, or just a bummer switch you are connected to.

nah, my other computer uses the same cord and goes at normal speed, so I doubt it's a physical layer/school network problem.

what about /sbin/ifconfig output? are there any errors on the interface?

Here are some things that are notable from ifconfig:

eth0
RX packets: 1214 errors: 0 dropped: 405 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets: 623 ... 0 for everything else

so it looks like a lot of dropped packets. if there's anything else that might be notable from ifconfig, I'll post it. however it's a real pain to type up the whole thing, so just tell me which parts are pertinent.

Anyone have any insight on this? I'm really in a bind.

Hi

are you sure you are connected to switch and not a hub ?

this is a typical symptom of a network card running full duplex against a networking unit (hub) that only supports half duplex (superslow, sporadic connections), try forcing your nic to run at half duplex. It should be able to autoconfigure the linkspeed/duplex, but sometimes this goes wrong.

good luck

How do I go about doing that?

I think it is driver specific if you have the option at all.

But if it is possible, i think you would be doing it with "ifconfig mediaopts half-duplex"

run "dmesg" and tjek for info about your card running half or full duplex.

You could try this also from the working machine to see what duplex this is using.

good luck

I typed in what you posted, and it had no idea what to do with it. I also tried ifconfig eth0 -media 10base2 and 10baseT, but it wouldn't allow me to change the setting. It said port: SIOCSIFMAP: Operation not perimitted. I don't even know if these were the media types I wanted; I'm really stabbing in the dark here. Also, I ran dmesg:

eth0: link up, 10 Mps, full-duplex, lpa 0x4061.

Any other ideas on how to get it to half-duplex?

Any ideas, please? I'm sure it isn't that difficult to switch it to half-duplex, I just have no idea how to do it. My box is basically unusable until this problem is resolved, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Starcastic

I am not sure either how to do this, but i am pretty sure you have to look at the documentation for the driver your card is using.

Can you post the output from "lsmod", or if the driver is compiled in to the kernel, exactly what driver the card is using,

regards

Brian

the output of lsmod would be pretty cumbersome to reproduce here, but I think the pertinent parts are:

via_rhine 23497 0
mii 4673 1 via_rhine

Is there another part of the output that would be important?

Ok, sorry to keep bringing this up, but an interesting thing happened. I booted up with the Knoppix 3.7 livecd, and everything went fine, no slowness, nothing. what is different between the two? how can I make the fc installation act like the knoppix cd?