university internet connection

[beeny]

I posted a similar entry in The Dorm but figured I should try here.

I just moved into my dorm at UCLA and brought my desktop up here. I'm connected through ethernet and registered through their system.

Web browsing in Firefox always works fine and never has any problems. Everything else has problems with it. Any program that requires a constant connection will randomly disconnect or take a long time to do anything.

Poker software take a long time to connect, are very slow, and randomly lose connection. Profiles in AIM take a long time to load and some messages take up to five minutes to send out. Tetrinet randomly stops working in the middle of games. But, even in the middle of all these problems, I'll be able to open up Firefox and surf the internet without any problems there.

I've tried closing my anti-virus, disabling XP's firewall, bypassing the hub to connect directly to the wall jack, and scanning for spyware but nothing worked. The student technology center said something must be wrong with my computer/software because I can still browse the web fine. When my desktop was at home I never had any of these problems though.

Anybody have any ideas?