As we all know a basic install of any OS is never tweaked out for performance but setup for general use.  One of the biggest problems in the Linux (CentOS, Ubuntu, Fedora, I have not tested other OS’s) is the network is never really tweaked up.

However running a few simple commands and updating a single file can produce a massive increase in performance.

** Please note that there are other issues that can cause poor performance **

Example Bad Network Cable, Cheap Switch, Overloaded Router, and others.

Run the following commands from the prompt.

mv /etc/sysctl.conf sysctl.bak
cd /etc
wget http://www.setupalinuxserver.com/files/sysctl.conf.txt
mv sysctl.conf.txt sysctl.conf
/sbin/sysctl -p
/sbin/sysctl -w net.ipv4.route.flush=1

You should see a performance increase right away.  Please let me know if this helps you out or not.