Ubuntu: Much faster net performance

[Masterdog]

I'm just playing around with Ubuntu until I can get around to re-installing Windows 7 on my machine (which I can't do until I finish some assignments. Long story). Anyway, I've noticed that Ubuntu is faster than Windows 7 when downloading - not only a little bit faster, significantly so. A normal HTTP download in Windows (or for that matter, Mac OS X which I'm also experimenting with (and disliking)) seems to top out at round 750kB/sec. In Ubuntu, I'm reaching 850. Most striking though was an NZB - Windows again never tops 800kB/sec, whereas in Ubuntu I was seeing over 1000.
How is the differential so great? I could accept maybe a few tweaks to give a few kB/sec difference, but with newsgroups it's over 20% faster, which is ridiculous. Obviously I'm not complaining about the speed increase, but I'm now wondering what I'm missing in Windows.

 

[Rainmaker]

Well *nix actually calculates download speed slightly differently to Windows for a start (MiB/sec v MB/sec). However, it is true that *nix has a way better networking stack than Windows - certainly IMO.

For example, in Windows 7 x64 I need 10 to 12 connections to max out my 50Mbps cable line using Giganews. Under Linux I can max my connection with 6-8 connections easily.

Basically you're finding out that *nix > Windows. I don't see why it'd be so much better than OS X though, as I find my MBP (running Snow Leopard 10.6.7) to be just as good as my Linux boxes, and they're both built off Unix.

EDIT: I should also have asked though, which distro, what NZB download client, and what ISP/speed do you have? 1000 of anything (KiB or KB) is 8+ Mbps so unless you're on a package over 8Mbps it was probably an incorrect reading anyway. If you're keen to experiment, I can't recommend LottaNZB and Sabnzbd+ enough - the former stand-alone, the latter server-side. The latest versions of LottaNZB actually use a SAB backend but the ones in the Ubuntu et al. repos atm are still using the older (Hellanzb based) versions.

Oh, and if various apps provide conflicting speed readouts I tend to fire up Activity Monitor as that's pretty accurate.