Using FTP to check the speed of the network is not a great idea, especially on slow laptop disks. You could be running into the limitations of your disk subsystem. There is a program called ttcp which will test TCP performance with nothing else involved. Are those card 16-bit PCMCIA, or 32-bit Cardbus? If they are 16-bit, you are probably maxing out the bus. 16-bit PCMCIA is no better than the old ISA bus in terms of speed. 32-bit Cardbus is like PCI. For the 10/100 card, check the settings to be sure that both ends of the link are operating at the same duplex. If you are connecting to a repeater (hub, not a switch) you must be using half duplex. If you are connecting to a switch, then the card has to be configured for the same duplex as the switch or you will have horrible performance. Alternatively, the card and the switch can be configured for autonegotiation, so they will both agree on the "best" settings that they both support. Unfortunately, autonegotiation is sometimes buggy and sometimes doesn't work right between different vendor's devices. This is more of a problem with older network devices. On Mon, Apr 01, 2002 at 08:14:06AM -0500, Robert L Krawitz wrote: rlk> I use two network cards in my Dell Inspiron 8000 (PIII-700): a 3Com rlk> 3CCFE574BT and a Linksys wireless card. With the 3Com card (which is rlk> a 10/100) I never get better than 1.4 MB/sec (about 12 Mb/sec), even rlk> when the card is in 100 Mb mode (at some point in the past the limit rlk> was about 2.5 MB/sec). At that rate, top shows my CPU utilization rlk> pegged at about 100%, even doing a simple ftp. I know the card rlk> doesn't do DMA, but that's rather slow even for a PIO transfer. These rlk> cards have been around for ages; I don't think people would have been rlk> too satisfied with 400 KB/sec saturating a 200 MHz system. rlk> rlk> On the Linksys card, I likewise never get more than about 250 KB/sec, rlk> even if the computer is right next to the WAP and the link quality is rlk> 92/92, suggesting that I'm also hitting up against a hard limit. The rlk> WAP is connected to my main system via the motherboard ethernet, which rlk> I know from other means (when I was transferring data from my previous rlk> system to the current one) has no trouble maxing out at 10 MB/sec rlk> (that ethernet does DMA). -- Charles R. Anderson <cra@wpi.edu> / http://angus.ind.wpi.edu/~cra/ PGP Key ID: 49BB5886 Fingerprint: EBA3 A106 7C93 FA07 8E15 3AC2 C367 A0F9 49BB 5886