>I have created a table with 10000 records in Firebird and a simple select * is slow. Over network @ 100 Mbps it takes a long time to fetch 10000 rows. The same is a snap in SQL Server or Mysql and only slightly slower in Postgre.
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>Am I doing something wrong? I didn't change any settings after Firebird installation.

I tested on another system this is a Intel core 2 duo, 1 gb ram. The results are contradictory to my first test. I don't understand what could be the difference.
I did a select * on a table with 1,25,000 rows on 4 databases. All 4 databases have exactly the same data, with synchronous connection in all the 4 cases. The results are:

Database                time taken in Seconds
Mysql 5.1                   3.448
SQL Server 2005             3.446
Postgre 8.3                 3.933
Firebird 2.1                2.383

Firebird much ahead in speed, Mysql & SQL Server neck to neck, Postgre only a little behind but giving better performance with every repeated query.