Hiya, I am having a weird problem. I hope someone here can help me with it. My setup is as follows: internet --- cablemodem --- linux firewall --- linux box (with vmware) I always used to have a download speed of 150 kb/s, until at one moment I got a new cable modem from my ISP (connected to a different platform), from that moment on I suddenly got a download speed of around 10 kb/s. After a month, they changed something perhaps - because recently I got a download speed of 100 kb/s, but never at the full speed anymore. However - recently I installed windows 98 on vmware on my linux box, and to my suprise I get 150 kb/s download speeds there! Apparently there is a difference between windows and linux that causes TCP/IP to work better with windows (with my ISP). At the same time however, when I try to download from download.microsoft.com I get an EXTREME slow "download" speed, like 100 b/s. This is NOT a problem of congestion or something - a neighbour with windows XP (and no linux firewall or anything) got 150 kb/s from download.microsoft.com at the very same time. So, also here this slow download speed must be the result of me using a linux firewall and/or vmware on a linux box. Again: I DO get 150 kb/s with that very same setup when downloading from test.arnhem.upc.nl, so the problem must be with download.microsoft.com in combination with that I am using a linux firewall or something. I am wondering if these are known issues; what could be the problem here? What is linux doing that is making download.microsoft.com "refuse" to serve me? Why is my download speed when downloading with linux slower than when I use windows 98 (on vmware/linux)? These things highly confuse me. Can someone shine a light on this? -- Carlo Wood