Ben, thanks for your response.

A. The speed of your CPU and the amount of RAM is not going to make much of a difference in your network speeds..the difference would be between the Win TCP stack and the Linux TCP stack.

Roger. This is good to know.

B. On a DSL connection the difference between the 3Com card and the Tulip based Kingston card would be slim to none.

Also, very good to know.

C. By the pasted in info on your pings. I would stay that your DNS is not set up in /etc/resolv.conf and this will slow everything down as it searchs...and you won't be able to use name resolution..hence having to use ip addresses.

I think my /etc/resolv.conf has the right DNS stuff in it. It says: nameserver 204.60.0.2 nameserver 204.60.0.3 These are the correct primary and secondary dns addresses. Should something else be in there too?

I would get your networking properly setup before you blame Linux.

Wo. I don't even know how to tie my own shoes in the linux world at this point. I'm not blaming linux for anything, no. Yikes, I don't want to make that impression at all.

myself haven't really screwed with PPPOE and I avoid any ISP that would use it.

I'd like to hear more of your thoughts on this point. Is pppoe very difficult to make secure from intruders, as opposed to SDSL? Do tell. Thanks for your time. Mike Flug michael.flug@snet.net