If you think it is a problem with the video card sharing the IRQ, you should
be able to disable that in your BIOS, most video cards do not need an IRQ
assigned unless they are being used for video capture or frame grabbing.
However, PCI devices can share IRQ's without any difficulty, one of the many
advantages of PIC over ISA.

Do you know what your xDSL connetion uses as a protocol? Since you have a
Cisco router I'll guess that it is using PPPOA.

You should check the MTU and Recieve Window size on the slow machine. These
are tcp/ip registry settings that are specific to the Ethernet adapter. You
will find more information on how to check and change these settings at
www.dslreports.com and www.speedguide.net
Tom C

>I set up a network with Diamond HomeFree 10Mbs network cards.  The internet
>host machine is an IBM PIII 600Mhz machine running Windows 98SE, and the
>first client is a Compaq Presario 5220 with an AMD K6-2 450Mhz and 64MB Ram
>running Windows 98 (original).  I am using WinGate as the proxy.  It is the
>Home version, and therefore I cannot do much configuration on it.
>
>The problem I am having is a slow internet connection on the Compaq.  The
>internet host has a 256k DSL connection using a Cisco 675 router.  The
>third machine is a Sony Viao PII 266, and it has a better internet
>connection than the Compaq.  Watching the transfer rates while the Compaq
>is online I see the data transfer burst-and-halt.  It will get a quick
>burst of up to 10k of data in a shot, run quickly for another 10k-20k of
>data, and then halt for as much as 20-30 seconds before the next block of
>data comes through.  Some web sites have choked things up so much that the
>computer actually freezes and needs to be rebooted.
>
>One issue is the NIC is on IRQ 11, but so is the modem and the video
>adapter.  No amount of IRQ reservation and finageling will keep all three
>of these devices from grabbing the same IRQ at the same time, which Windows
>98 seems to share without too much trouble.  Could this IRQ sharing cause
>this slow internet problem?  Is it possibly the proxy server, and can I do
>anything about that?  The best speed I can seem to manage is around
>28-36kbps.
>
>Diamond suggested I remove a registry key on the host machine, which I did,
>but it did not seem to have any effect.  I even tried using a different
>hardware profile and disabeling the modem in the alternate profile.  All to
>no avail.  Any solutions suggestions would be welcom.  BTW, there are only
>two PCI slots on the motherboard filled by the modem (needed for the users
>banking software) and the NIC.  Swapping the cards between these two slots
>yeilds no better results.  Oh, and I tried running without the firewall on
>the host machine;  this did nothing to change the circumstances.
>
>I know I have asked for help on other problems with this setup, but I
>really want to find an answer to this one.  Thanks in advance.
>
>Kyle Elmblade
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