I finally managed to install Ubuntu 7.10, Gutsy Gibbon. As I wrote in my earlier post, it was not such a straightforward experience.
Tweaking firefox is usually the first thing I do after installing any operating system. The very first thing I do is to set home page to www.google.ca .
I was shocked to see that the main google page took many seconds to come! After trying few other addresses, I realized that there is something wrong.
I well remember that in Ubuntu 6.10 I had the very same problem. This was totally gone in Ubuntu 7.04 and now in 7.10 it is back again.
This is a partial solution:
In firefox, type:
about:config
find this:
network.dns.disableIPv6
and change its value to "true"
There you go! It fairly fixes the problem in firefox but the connection is still painfully slow and with serveral seconds delay in anywhere else (for instance when you want to update your repositories in synaptic).
Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon feels more like Windows, painfully frustrating.
October 20, 2007
Slow internet connection in Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon
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41 comments:
I've experienced the exact same problem in both Edgy and Gutsy (though, again, it was absent in Feisty). I use Kubuntu, and I found that Konqueror worked fine, as did Kontact and Kopete, but Adept Manager wouldn't download anything as it was far too slow, and nor would Firefox or Synaptic in Ubuntu. I might try what you've said, but without being able to use Adept I can't really consider using Gutsy at present - I really hope someone can find a full solution.
You make a very valid point. As long as it cannot use internet in full speed, it is far from being usable.
Try commenting out all references to IPv6 addresses in /etc/hosts.
Commenting means you add a # to the beginning of the line you want to comment out:
#::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
Try this...worked VERY well for me.
Add the following to /etc/sysctl.conf (524288 could be too large, try 262144 or 131072 in place of 524288 if you don't notice an improvement. 524288 worked best for me though.):
# Tweaks for faster broadband...
net.core.rmem_default = 524288
net.core.rmem_max = 524288
net.core.wmem_default = 524288
net.core.wmem_max = 524288
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 87380 524288
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 524288
net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 524288 524288 524288
net.ipv4.tcp_rfc1337 = 1
net.ipv4.ip_no_pmtu_disc = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_fack = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_ecn = 0
net.ipv4.route.flush = 1
Then to have the settings take effect immediately, run:
sudo sysctl -p
Source:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=251509
Thank you for the help. Isn't is disappointing that something that was working in its old edition (7.04) requires so much fixes and discussions just to get it up and running? It is not the Ubuntu I know.
Sorry, went to do the /etc/sysctl.conf I mentioned above on my laptop, and it seems to only work when combined with Matthew's tip about commenting out the ipv6 references in /etc/hosts.
You may also need to edit a line in /etc/modprobe.d/aliases from
alias net-pf-10 ipv6
to
alias net-pf-10 off
Havn't looked into exactly which combination of these is responsible for the speed increases I've gotten, but either 2 of them or all of them may help.
I have had the same problem. I edited the ipv6 config line in about:config of firefox. Rebooted Ubuntu and still nothing happened. Its so bad that I had to switch to windows to post this comment.
Great. Now try going to www.geant.net
$ host www.geant.net
www.geant.net is an alias for www.dante.net.
www.dante.net is an alias for web.dante.net.
web.dante.net has IPv6 address 2001:798:2:284d::60
Though only a tiny proportion of Internet addresses are ipv6 (and the one above has an ipv4 address too), that's set to increase. Right now many ISPs can't even route IPv6.
ISTClusterbooklet2005.pdf
www.google.ca is an ipv4 address. When I tried it just now it was there like a snap. That's what it should be because a DNS lookup is a fast process, so the overhead of an ipv6 lookup followed by an ipv4 lookup shouldn't be major (in theory).
Try these in a terminal to see the response time you are getting for queries, replacing <your_isp_dns_server> with an ip from /etc/resolv.conf
dig @<your_isp_dns_server> www.surfnet.nl
dig @<your_isp_dns_server> www.geant.net
dig @<your_isp_dns_server> www.google.ca
Try each one twice to get an idea of how much of a speedup you get from the local DNS having cached the result. If the speedup isn't noticable, bring it up with your ISP.
I'm on Gutsy (since tribe 5) and not having an issue.
I had absolutely no problem with internet speed with my current computer and ISP when I was using Ubuntu 7.04.
Just what I was looking for. Thanks for the advice and the comments.
I have to say thanks for the various posters above, a combination of the three things mentioned above completely solved my problem.
It made a huge difference (between ~10sec to the pre-upgrade speed of <1sec for site like google).
"www.google.ca is an ipv4 address. "
Which is just the point, the slowness should have nothing to do with IPv6. Firefox gets no IPv6 address for the hostname so it should not even try connecting there. (where would it try to connect to?) I don't know where the problem exactly is but it sounds disabling IPv6 is just a hack in this case. The common problems I've seen are related to sites having IPv6 addresses, resolved instantly like IPv4 addresses but which don't have a network daemon listening on them. (or the user having no IPv6 routing set even though he/she has an IPv6 address) In the latter cases force disabling IPv6 is quite justified.
I have this problem with download speed diminishing and bouncy but upload was always ok.
I tried all the fixes I could find to no avail, including upgrading libc6 with a pre-release.
None of the fixes worked but my problem sounded so much like what others were experiencing.
So I tried to boot off cd from older version of ubunty (6.10) desktop.
Problem was still there.
Thought maybe its the network card so I swapped it out.
I'm now back to full download speed.
Is it possible that so many have had network cards failing or that something about gutsy is damaging the cards?
Threeseas/Tim Rue (as anonymous)
I just wanted to say that this worked really great for me This is a partial solution:
In firefox, type:
about:config
find this:
network.dns.disableIPv6
and change its value to "true"
I went the route of changing the network cards but still there was slowness in the internet connection speed. But the above worked. I also had problems getting internet period, but that was solved after finding out that some of the Realtek Network Cards were not supported by the kernel. So, I basically got a non-Realtek Network Card and it worked fine, but slow and the above post made it faster. Thanks a bunch guys!
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/896481/how_to_fix_a_slow_internet_connection_in_ubuntu_7_10/
i purged my dns settings, wrote them again, and voila! greatly increased speed, back to what it was
1. Open a terminal window and type the following.
$ sudo network-admin
Note: Root access is required for this step.
2. Change to the DNS tab and enter the following two addresses in the top of the first field labeled DNS Servers.
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220
To avoid having your settings get revoked after reboots, or after periods of inactivity, do this:
$ sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.auto
$ sudo gedit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf
# append the following line to the document
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;
# save and exit
$ sudo ifdown eth0 && sudo ifup eth0
You may be required to change eth0 to your own network device's name if it uses a non-standard name.
Just switched to Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon from Mepis 6.5 for several reasons, probably obvious to anyone that has used MEPIS.
I have a Compaq Presario 900 Laptop (1700+ AMD, 1ghz Ram, 40gig HD, ATI Mobility Video) and Cable ISP.
I used ALL tweaks and fixes listed here. Starting with Firefox and ending with the DNS addresses. By the time I finished page loading time went from "Forever" to "RIGHT NOW!", Thunderbird loads emails at acceptable speed, Network traffic between machines is decent. MUCH better...
However...
If I click a link (any link, from anywhere, at any time) in Firefox, it takes EXACTLY ten seconds from the time I click until the time that Firefox actually starts looking for the page.
So, like this:
I click a link.
Busy cursor and Firefox's activity indicator start to work, "FasterFox Extension" Page load counter starts counting.
Ten seconds go by.
Firefox comes alive, status bar show "Looking up..." and BOOM! Page is there.
In Firefox 2.0.0.9 and MEPIS 6.5, as well as in Windows XP on this same machine, this was all instantaneous so I know it is most likely a Firefox issue.
I tried loading Firefox without any Extensions and Themes. Same issue.
Any ideas for the cause and fix of this issue would be greatly appreciated!!!!!
Thank you all for the AWESOME support as I am EXTREMELY new to Ubuntu and rather new to Linux all together. This is by far, one of the best "how-to" answers for ANY problem I have come across since I started my Linux journey.
Solved: Delay between clicking a link and actual activity from firefox.
The issue was my own fault as, in an attempt to fix the ipv6 issue, I had selected to "autodetect proxy settings" under the connection options and had forgot to set it back to "direct connection".
I'm dumb! Lol. Firefox 2.0.0.11 works EXCELLENT under Ubuntu 7.10 and it's speed is as I remember previously! As does SwiftFox 3.0b!
Again, great 'fix-it' work to all, and sorry about my lack of detail to my own changes!
Well, after trying all of the above suggestions, I have found a minimal speed increase in web browsing with Gutsy.This becomes quite annoying when I jump on Windows XP and and it's like lightning, yet with Gutsy, Im still lagging. When I go to google.com I expect that it should pop up almost instantly...like within a second or two. But in using Gutsy I find myself waiting nearly ten seconds for google, which is ridiculous, and with sites like bash.org, I could be waiting upwards of 25-30 seconds to see the page. The part that bothers me most though is that no one seems to be working towards a real bug fix. This is obviously an issue, being the vast number of people complaining, and when I get on the Ubuntu bugtracker I see dozens of users trying to sort it out, and no developers confirming this a big flaw in Gutsy and trying to fix it. I switched from Arch Linux because I wanted something I didn't have to constantly maintain, something that just works. Unfortunately Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon does not "just work". Nothing seems to be easily fixed and I don't see any major effort to change that. Looks like I'll be heading back to Arch.
Wow. I have an idea. Come on in here where someone has tried very hard to fix an issue to a known bug in Ubuntu 7.10 in multiple and completely different machines, lay down your disbelief in an entire operating system, explain how horrible of an experience you had by visiting this blog and not getting an answer to your specific problem on your specific machine, and then tell everyone else who comes here ever when searching for the fix to a problem they have in their own OS that the system they chose to run is junk according to you and will never get fixed!
Way to make the Linux Community proud to be what it is, OpenSource, free of charge, and as helpful on a per person, per system basis as it possibly can considering that no one is getting paid to sit here and work out YOUR bug on YOUR system for you so you wont complain and switch back to some other flavor of the OS instead or a completely different OS all together.
I am brand new to Linux. Been with it about a week. I chose Ubuntu after trying MEPIS and wishing there was just a little more of my look/feel/needs into it and finding Ubuntu Gutsy to be the saving grace. I guess it came down to Gnome vs. KDE in the end, but at the time, I didn't know that was the difference.
I am using it on a laptop that came with Windows XP Home installed.
I started with the LiveCD, then installed Ubuntu as a dual-boot, to be sure I could still fall back on my Windows install if Linux was not what I had hoped it would be (hey, I was a bit nervous about it too).
Now that I have had help in here and the forums with very specific issues to my own system, I have removed Windows all together on this machine as well as my desktop and the only problem with EITHER machine that was HARD to fix was this issue with slow internet/networking. And on both machines, it took about ten minutes of following the directions exactly to fix the issue as well.
Linux is not a hard thing to use, it is in essence, a perfect way to easily get away from closed source OS's like Windows and OSX.
The forums at Ubuntu's website are full of people who know what they are talking about and have spent hours with some of the people needing help to specifically solve each of their issues, and free of charge, without pay, on their OWN time!!!!!
If YOU don't like Ubuntu 7.10 because it isn't working for you after trying the fixes HERE, to avoid losing more recognition to Linux all together, maybe you should avoid stating things the way you just did and simply state that this particular set of fixes did not solve the problem for you and that you might need to switch to a previous flavor of Linux that you know worked until the bugs are worked out of this particular version? Or try a previous version of Ubuntu? By what I have been reading, Feisty Fawn seems to work better than Gutsy so far.
Or maybe try another flavor that works in a similar way, MEPIS is decent as well. It works in the same manner as Ubuntu, only using KDE desktop rather than Ubuntu's choice of Gnome, as I stated earlier. Which is also easily changeable.
If I had come here for an answer and read your post, I might have just gone back to Windows and continued to think that Linux was too hard for the average computer user and that Ubuntu itself was most likely garbage. Which is most likely what others that are maybe more timid than I was about switching to Linux to begin with will do after reading your comment.
Good thing I am open minded and have a desire to learn as I go and eventually help where I can as these other people do to make Linux a great experience for new-comers to the system, instead of scaring people off. Wish we all could be this way so that Linux's reputation built UP instead of DOWN.
The tone of above message is self explanatory.
yeah, tre. well said....
The forums for ubuntu really is a big help for both the novices and the experts.
kudos to the ubuntu community!
I am a novice and recent convert to Kubuntu. I still run XP Professional on my laptop but use Kubuntu much more than Windows now on my PC.
I have had all sorts of trouble trying to get Gutsy Gibbon to work and have decided to revert to Feisty Fawn for the time being.
There is a need to stop the moaning. Try moaning to Microsoft and see how far you get and they get paid to fix the problems.
I am not even getting at Microsoft either, I find some of the gratuitous comments about MS just as pointless as carping on about Gutsy & Linux.
The fact is, there is obviously a deep seated bug within Kubuntu/Ubuntu which probably goes back to previous versions and has resurfaced. It manifests itself in different ways, on different systems but there is a pattern emerging.
In my case, konqueror connected to the internet really fast but nothing else would connect at all, including Adept.
The mirror was scanned during installation but did not respond and this resulted in the updates being impossible to obtain later on.
I was able to get Firefox to access web pages but only via Konqueror. The same Site would then load the sub pages direct from Firefox, until you tried an external link. This would then fail to connect.
This indicates to me that the problem is based around DNS and IP6 etc but I think that it is deep seated and subtle.
I do not believe that it can be fixed with just ad hoc workarounds. Gutsy does need fixing by people who really know what they are doing and that is not going to be me!
In the meantime, I shall keep up to date with events, as they unfold, and stick with Feisty.
What worked for me was modifying /etc/modprobe.d/aliases file. Change the line
alias net-pf-10 ipv6
to
alias net-pf-10 off
I was experiencing the same problem. I have a dual-boot system with WinXP Pro and Ubuntu 7.10 Gusty Gibbon. Taking hints from here, I first disabled IPv6 in the about:config of Firefox and then commented out all the IPv6 entries in the /etc/hosts file. Now everything works fine, but I'm still looking for explanations and a proper fix. I'll post in case I get something.
That's what I'm talking about...great posts lads. As work-arounds go it's A-1. thanks a million.
I have just installed Ubuntu 7.10 and was experiencing some of the same connection speed issues discussed here.
My difficulty was not with web browsing, but with downloading large files. I am setting up another drive partition with CentOS and needed to download the .iso. My connection speed would bounce from 300KB/sec to 5KB/sec and sometimes less. The connection would die or freeze long before the 635 MB file was downloaded. My Windows XP machine on the same local net was holding steady at ~250 KB/sec.
I implemented the suggestions given here,
1. $ sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/aliases
comment out
#alias net-pf-10 ipv6
and add
alias net-pf-10 off
2. $ sudo gedit /etc/hosts
comment out all iv6 entries
3. restart
Now my download speed is bouncing from 400KB/sec to 50KB/sec, most of the time remaining above 100, which is a significant improvement. This connection is still dying before i can get the entire file, which is probably the fault of the server where I am downloading.
Any suggestions on what to do now?
Thanks for the help so far,
LMH_medchemist
Quote:
In firefox, type:
about:config
where do i type this in firefox?
thanks
You type it in the address bar.
I have tried two solutions:
1. disable firefox DNS for ipv6
2. disable ipv6 on /etc/modprobe.d/aliases
both worked for web browsing. Now I can surf web. But none worked for SSH, MSN and Synaptic, and maybe others I have not tested yet.
Very easy to fix, what the issue is, your box is trying to search its DNS cache for the website or to resolve it so to speak.
Try this
Click on System
Click on Administration
Click on Network
Click on DNS tab
Delete any 192.x.x.x from the dns list.
You should only use your ISP's dns cache (u can use others, but the 192 address's is local to your machine, or if you have another DNS on your internal network)
I have tried several things this article mentioned, and now my internet is significantly faster. My question is, what happens when we start seeing many ipv6 addresses. Will we have to go back to being slow, or will windows then get slower too, or something else?
The good news is that Ubuntu 8.04 doesn't have this problem. Try the new one. But first make sure you play with it in live mode before installing it.
Gust, i have same trouble with 8.04. It has not been fixed i think.
Hi,
I have a question. I am connected to a wlan when ever I use ubuntu [gutsy or heron] detecting the wlan is dicey sometimes it does other times it doesn't . But once I am connected I get a good connection. I have a dual boot with vista ultimate . on vista I can detect and connect easily but the connection is never good . Any ideas ?
I tried all the configurations people posted on this thread and nothing helped until by accident I unchecked "system settings" check box in > network connections - wired/wireless >edit > "system settings"
now I'm running very fast.
Thank you Richard, By removing the DNS configuration from DNS tab at System->Administration->Network, My Network is Fast and normal again.
"The issue was my own fault as, in an attempt to fix the ipv6 issue, I had selected to "autodetect proxy settings" under the connection options and had forgot to set it back to "direct connection"."
tre, you are a GENIUS! I did the exact same thing, and tried every suggestion above yours, when somehow I had switched my settings to "autodetec proxy settings", too. Now with "No proxy" (ff 3), it's BLAZING FAST! Thank you!
Hello people,
I am using gusty (kubuntu) .... Based on what richard said I removed the 192.1...... DNS address and it is working fine now. I wish this helps you a people also.
Thanks.....
Thanks, worked great!
There is a discussion of the broader issues here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=87798
I apologise if this has already been mentioned.
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