I have a Problem, and i think it is my ethernet card

Hello, I have a Sony vaio Cr520 and when ever i try to download a file from the internet i get really slow speeds, around 20-75 KBps, when my other computer on the same network gets speeds of 350-450 KBps, they are both connected through an ethernet cable. What is strange is that internet browsing is not very slow, and the download speed usually starts at around 145KBps but drops very quickly to the speed mentioned above. I don't know what the problem could be, i have scaned for spyware and have found nothing.

Thanks

 

What operating system is each of the computers on?

 

both running vista

 

oh xD sorry don't know then

 

Go to this link: http://tinyurl.com/6noe3n

It's a Cisco program called Speed Meter Pro - they have a full version trial. It will analyze your network and tell you where your data slowdown is coming from.

The obvious questions to ask is whether or not you have anyone else using your network at the same time, either authorized or unauthorized (SMP will tell you that as well). If you're network is unsecured, you could have someone stealing your bandwidth either knowingly or unknowingly. Sometimes people connect to a network they think is theirs but it's someone else's because no one ever makes a unique SSID - they leave it at default thinking they have to be the only one out of several hundred million people who use the router they're using, not thinking that their neighbor could be using the same device and default SSID.
Or, if you have others using your network, that's the likely cause.

 

Good point, and thank for the link, i will give that program a try, however the network is not wireless, i have tried connecting two different computers downloading the same file from the same website, while being the only computer connected to the router, but the Sony Cr520 still has a really slow download speed, hopefully the Speed Meter will tell me what the problem is.
Thanks

 

If that's the case then there are a lot of different factors that will affect your speeds, most directly the background processes running on each given system at the time, and their RAM configurations. If I had to guess without seeing, the slower machine either has less RAM or is using a Vista Edition with minimal RAM configuration, or even if it has a good RAM setup is running a lot of processes in the background. Other things like Windows Firewall, an A/V program running (especially if it's in a mode where it's checking all incoming files) and similar programs will slow download speeds to a crawl. Programs like AVG and Norton are big contributors to data crawl rates.

Speed Meter should tell you that as well though.