Somebody in the thread at some point said: > How can the firewall cause the speed to be good for 2 or 3 seconds > (1.5Mb) and then fall to 30Kbit? Anyone? There is actually rate limiting stuff in iptables, but presumably you would know if you had enabled it. You don't specify what kinds of "internet" access you tried, was it just http or you saw the same problem all over? I would re-enable the firewall, confirm the problem comes back and then post the results of iptables -L -n and the early part of tcpdump while you try to make a transfer that is affected. -Andy