Hi Lester,
Have you got IPv6 running on linux? I've had linux run slow when this
is enabled.

To disable it (on Ubuntu)

create a file /etc/modprobe.d/bad_list with the following line in it
alias net-pf-10 off


This make it run far better for me.

If you're not using Ubuntu, you'll have to work it out yourself.

Regards
Ian Newby