Well, the miner was the only process using the network, so there was nothing else to interfere with the miner's network access.

Since you mentioned that a low network speed can lead to increased rejected counts, could it be possible that my internet speed is limiting the miner's capabilities? I live in Africa, and only have 2mbps / 256KB/s up and down. Would you suggest I physically take this machine to some location where I could get faster internet and try mining from there to see if there is a difference?

What else could be causing the high rejected share count? Should I try a different miner, or a different kernel for phoenix2 (I tried using phatk2)? Anything I should try on the hardware, etc?