I have a Dell Precision T5400 with a Broadcom 1Gb onboard NIC. For some strange reason, when I access machines on our local network, the best I can get is around 125KB/s download speed. My laptop that has a 10/100Mb NIC onboard usually gets around 300KB/s or better from the same network resource. Both machines are plugged into the same 1Gb switch which connects to our local network wall jack at 100Mb half duplex. There is also a printer plugged into the same switch at 100Mb full.

The resource I'm using for the test is a 30MB zip file copied from a jetty webserver that is running as part of a cruisecontrol installation. The cruisecontrol installation is running WindowsXP with full real-time antivirus and Altiris patch management and inventory running. That stuff on its own is eating some of the download speed. I've seen the laptop reach into the multiple MB/s download speed before, but the desktop never seems to get past 125KB/s to 130KB/s.

In WindowsXP, before I upgraded the driver in the desktop, it was that slow. In Fedora, it is still slow even though it appears to be using the same driver version as the upgraded Windows driver. The upgraded Windows driver is faster, but still not nearly as fast as the laptop.

What gives? Any insight to improve the situation would be appreciated.

Could it be that the BroadCom board just isn't that good, or the driver in linux is just not as good as the Windows one?