Xepra, there are just too many variables too tell. Could you give a little more info? For ex.
1. How is your friend connected to the Internet (dial-up, cable, etc.)
2. Is this a single person that you get slow downloads from or is the problem across the board (slow download speeds from ANY and ALL sites)
3. How do you connect to the internet?
4. If you know your friends IP address or hostname try pinging their site and see what kinds of times you get. Of course this is going to depend on your connection, but I'd consider consisent ping times over 200ms to be latent (slow). If this is the case, traceroute to the site and see if there is a specific "Hop" that is bogging you down.
5. What is the transfer rate on average?
6. How large is the file?
Go to
and try their "speed test". This will give your download speed for a given file size.
There are plenty of other variables that could come into play, but if you can post the answers to these questions I'm sure someone on the board will be able to help you narow this down.