I have tried all the recommended fixes (kill ipv6, different DNS, etc). Am now struggling with NDISwrapper. Dmesg says even without NDIS the driver is correct for Linksys WUSB54v4. Downloaded ndiswrapper-1.53. Got message after "make"- "Makefile 23: kernel tree not found-please set KBUILD to configured kernel" I Googled the above- 10300 hits! Downloaded kernel headers haven't tried yet Plan to keep trying. But this is very aggraavating! Les

Check that WinXP and fedora are each reporting the download rate with the same units: Bps vs bps (spot the caps).

Of course - using a non-legacy distro would help.

Thanks for your reply. I am not currently using Fedora 5. I am using Fedora 9 ( kernel 2.6.25.14-108.fc9.i686) More to follow later re ndiswrapper and kernel-headers.

the default repositories for Fedora 9 are brutal slow.

The first thing to do after an install is to type:

yum install yum-fastestmirror

that fixes the slow downloads.

You may want to update your profile sometime then

Is the slow download for any old thing or just yum install something?

Thanks for both of you. I will try the yum-fastestmirror when I get to the desktop (this one is Dell 1520 laptop) Also have reviewed my profile. Further info : age 81 WWII vet Navy electronics tech. Married 54 years two daughters one son eight grandchildren one great. Been using, building computers 25 years. My first was a KayPro-two vertical enormous 300k drives CP/M operating system. Have built several since. Sorry about saying Fedora 5. Have used several Red Hat distros-also Slackware. Yeah - I checked the download rate-all KB

The fastmirror is for yum repos. If you also get slow speeds with, say, wget, it will surprising if it works. Do you notice slow loading for web pages?

I have had the experience that linux apps tend to report speeds in kB while windows like to report speed in kbps. To be sure, please provide an example from a test - include the method of download, location of file, and ave. speed reported.

Otherwise we'll have to consider the network environment - how are you accessing the internet?

Well I think your problem is that you have to compile ndiswrapper with the KBUILD parameter. That is you have to add the path of your kernel headers/source to the make command . This is cause you can build ndiswrapper for the kernel you want no matter if you are using it at the moment.

It is impossible that Windows downloads data 10 times faster than Fedora. Either you have a proble with the card driver or doanload speed units are different.

Regards

Which would follow from:... sure enough. However, we notice that:... which suggests that ndiswrapper may not be needed anyway. Plausable, because Lynksys have always had good linux support. It would be nice to make sure.

The problem which needs fixing is slow downloads in linux but not XP. If we rule out a mistake over units (i.e. if XP-rate/Lin-rate = 8) then testing with the windows driver may be useful. Only, if there is a problem with the linux driver, there would be myriad complaints. So far, this is the only one.

I am a little slow in responding to thank you all for your comments. Here in U.S the sky is falling and the Wall Street big shots are considering a jump from a high place. Fascinating to watch on T,V, Well---
cal: I tried yum-fastestmirror - no help.
simon: here is raw data from Mcaffee speedometer;
XP 2.9207 MB (caps) in 17.153 seconds
F9 159.005 KB (caps) in 7.3 seconds
ilpadrino: Mi Espanol es muy mal , perro gracias para su input. I couldnt dig up the word for input.

XP: 2.9207MB*1024=2990.8kB in 17.153s is 174.36kBps
f9: 159.005kB in 7.3s is 21.782kBps

Thing is... 174/22=7.9 ... basically 8.
This is what I'd expect if McAfee was reporting bits for XP and bytes for f9.
OR - Maybe McAfee's servers just don't like linux? (Optimized for Windows perhaps?)

Now - I don't actually trust McAfee Speedo all that much. When I tried, I got "100KBPS" listed on my 256kbps connection (yes - NZ data speeds suck) 100kbps makes more sense. But it makes no sense to use different units for different tests and less yet for fedora to stop at the slow test while XP triggers the fast one.

Have a look at:
http://www.vodafone.co.nz/broadband/...FQeFbgodsi78EQ
... this checks upload and download speeds.

I get:
Download Speed: 1654 kbps (206.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 134 kbps (16.8 KB/sec transfer rate)
Latency: 78 ms
... off this one, to McAfee's "100KBPS".

Is it possible that the upload speed on your ADSL connection is 1/8 of the download speed?

simon: The first set of data I gave you was run on two different machines Dell 1520; SLI homemade desktop. I re ran both on SLI with following: XP 2.927 MB 17.355 sec; F9 150.005 KB 10.856 sec. Now I'll try your URL.

simon:I ran speed tests per your advice on Vodaphone: XP down on Dell 1251kb/s up 343 kb/s SLI XP down 1295 kb/s up 341 kb/s. SLI only: F9 down 133 kb/s up 93 kb/s
I have a Time-Warner broadband cable modem - usually running at 54 mb/s.
The Dell Wireless adapter is a 1395 802.11g mini card. Absolutely amazing - took zero configuration requirement. Worked with Linksys router instantly.

In f9, try adjusting MTU: iirc

ifconfig eth0 mtu 1450

(default is 1500)

I tried to add a third disk to my SLI machine and XP choked on it-messed up hal.dll-so I have been fighting it since last post. Finally installed XP in parallel with wrecked installation which contains financial etc. I think I am close to recovering data. Am not conversant enough yet with Linux distros to move my office stuff yet. Will try adjusting MTU when I get XP unsnarled. ( Incidentally the third time XP has screwed up in three years.) Oh me----