internet connections slow with 2.6.8-r3, fine with 2.6.7

[ijdod]

I recently noticed that any connection I make to the internet when running 2.6.8-r3 (gentoo-dev) is dead slow. I've observed this with http, ftp and portage. A site that will do 450+ KB/s will slow to 3 KB/s after a reboot to 2.6.8-r3 (and a different machine on the same connection will also do 450+ KB/s while 2.6.8 is doing 3 KB/s, from the same server).

If I boot back to 2.6.7-r13 everything is fine again. I've noticed this behaviour on both gentoo boxes I have here, which are about as different as it gets, hardware wise. Sniffing the traffic didn't provide any helpfull hints either. Traffic appears correct, it's just slowed to about 2 packets per second.

I have noticed that local connections not leaving my LAN are fine. Iperf can push the connection to near maxed out, and even FTP is reasonably fast with 2.6.8 (6 MB/s) when connecting to my local FTP server. 2.6.7 ss still faster with ftp, but not by much. iperf score is the same regardless of version

This problem was there with the previous 2.6.8 release as well. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this?

[renumerator42]

I've had essentially the same error, very slow, and then stopping completely, also on two different boxes. I never did find a solution, but I did move to 2.6.9 and it was fixed. Further confusing, my wireless worked fine. So it must be something specific to eth0 or something.

my two ethernet cards are bmc4401 and natsemi8381

to bad really b/c 2.6.9-nitro doesn't have good-working fbsplash or ndiswrappers, where as 2.6.8-gentoo-r3 did.