Home Network W/ LinkSys

[shurwd23]

I have Roadrunner Cable, a linksys BEFSR41 router, a PC with XP PRo that tests at 2.6-2.7MB/s, and 2 98SE machines that are testing at 70-100KBS/s. One of the 98SE's has a 10MB NIC and the other has a 10/100. The tests were done on cable-modem.net. I also have a PS2 but I don't know how to test that connection speed. I have tried anything I can think of to figure out why there is such a difference. I could really use some help with this. Is it the OS? Do I need to upgrade to 2000? or is there something else that I could be missing?

Thanks in advance.

[Addict]

Not too surprising. Win9x is a slacker when it comes to networking. XP Pro & 2000 are great (by design).

[YeOldeStonecat]

Well, like mentioned above, NT has a far more dynamic TCP stack.

But many other things factor into the equation...

Overall health of the OS, how well it was built, IRQ's (like is the NIC sharing with anything), drivers, how lean the OS is running, hardware specs for each computers, brand of NIC and how compatible it is with whatever it's plugged into, etc etc.

[shurwd23]

Thanks for your help, I was thinking along the lines of the OS but was not 100% sure. I did some tweaking and have gotten the 98SE machine to 3MB/Sec so I am happy with that. Again these test are through Cable-modem.net, I am trying to stay consistant. Just to answer a question from YeOldeStonecat, that machine was just re-formatted so it is pretty clean. That is why I was so surprised on how slow it was. There are no IRQ issues, and drivers are the most current from D-Link.
Thanks