Izaak99

I would have to agree with Linux as a solution. Get Red Hat or Mandrake, they make it very easy to install and learn. You can probably get away with a Celeron 500 and Xitami or thttpd. You don't need a fast SCSI drive, just a lot of memory. Also, I would look at Pure-FTP for Linux over ProFTP since they built it with security in mind and it has no exploits to date. If you go with MS Windows, try Xitami instead of IIS. It also supports acting as an FTP server. As far as licensing is concerned, the 10 limit is on the Microsoft Networking level and if you avoid IIS or anything using Microsoft authentication you don't have to purchase MS Server. It's sad that there's really no difference between the two (workstation and server) and you can convert between them with a simple registry hack (http://www.03am.com/ntswitch.shtml). Anyways, just make sure that whatever you go with is secure and you can set some bandwidth limits for transfers so spiders or bots or download accelerators are not taking control of your site.

Had this happen to me also.. but this was my own stupid fault (I kicked my network cable so it was barely in the plug). Here's some things you can check: If you are using a hub make sure both network adapters are set to half-duplex or there will be massive collisions slowing you down. If you are using a switch, go for full or stick with autonegotiation. Load up gpedit.msc and head over to Computer Configuration->Administrative Templates->Network->QOS Scheduler and set the Limit Reservable Bandwidth to 10% or 0%. Try experimenting by starting or stopping the Background Intelligent Transfer service and the Upload Manager service. My computer doesn't seem to transfer well with the Background one on, but makes no difference with the Upload Manager on or off. If the client and the server are on different subnets make sure you allow all ICMP traffic to go through so the Path MTU discovery works. I've noticed Windows XP freaks out if you block traffic going to/from localhost (127.0.0.1). So if you do have a firewall, try adding a rule to allow all TCP/UDP traffic to/from this address and see if that speeds things up. Also you can try Windows XP's network diagnostics, though it might be difficult to understand. Type in "netsh diag gui" in DOS to launch it. Good luck.