Slow Internet web browsing

[MichaelG653]

I have just installed PCLinuxOS and I love it.........lol...... it includes java and I could never get it to install in Mandriva. The only problem I am having and I also had it with Mandriva is that web pages take forever to load even when going back to a previous page. I have a dual os computer with Linux on one hdd and Vista on another hdd and the bootloader on a floppy. Now my internet connection with Vista is fine and on Linux the chat programs work fine, but Mozilla and Konqueror are both slow as snails........:( . The internet for Linux (both Mandriva and PCLinuxOS) was the standard one used during installation, I pretty much used what it considered the best one.... lol....... I am a newbie to Linux obviously. Now my internet connection is a dsl thru the local phone company (Centurytel) with their modem (Netopia) and then a Belkin router to share it with my wife's computer. I haven't been able to check my speed yet but will asap and let you know what I find and post it. In the meantime.... any suggestions on how to speed it up???? I am sure there is some setting that is wrong with my Linux since Vista flies thru web pages but Linux limps along like it was dial up....:( . Please remember I am a Linux newbie so make sure you explain it to me real slowwwwwwwwwww.........lol..

Thanks

P.S. Just completed some speed tests at speedtest.net and the times were similar to what I get with my Windows connection.... so it must be something with my web browsers that is causing the pages to load so slowly........ I have reviewed the options but don't really see anything that would slow it down........ the cache is set for 100mb which is what I use with Windows....... should it be higher? Any suggestions?

[kilgoretrout]

Try disabling IPV6; that's a common source of "slow internet" problems on linux. You do that by editing /etc/modprobe.conf. Open a console and run:

$ kdesu kwrite /etc/modprobe.conf

Enter your root password when prompted and kwrite will come up with root privileges displaying modprobe.conf. Add this line:

alias net-pf-10 off

Save the changes; close kwrite and reboot. See if that helps.

[MichaelG653]

Okay have made the changes....... it seems a little faster but will continue to test this new setup ...... it still seems awful slow tho......lol....... maybe it is just me. Thanks for the tip

[MichaelG653]

Thought I would update this thread.... the web pages seem to load a tad quicker, but still not as fast as they do in Windows. I have even tried out the Opera web browser which is the fastest of my 3 browsers, plus we upgraded our dsl connection to 3mps over the 1.5mps we had originally (got a better deal from my provider...lol), but even that hasn't helped the web page loading speed. Any other suggestions to improve this situation?

[kilgoretrout]

My first hunch would be a problem with DNS resolution. You can test by entering the numeric ip for a website in your browser and the name of the website in the browser and see if the numeric comes up much faster. For example, try doing this for this website. For PCMechanic type this in your browser:

http://www.pcmech.com/

and then try this:

http://209.68.45.231/

The second address is the numeric ip of the first address. If the first one takes forever to load and the second one comes right up, you can be pretty sure you have a DNS problem. Note, that a numeric ip will always come up faster than the domain name version since with a domain name you have to route through your ISP's DNS server to look up the numeric ip for that domain. However, if there is a really huge difference, you can be pretty sure your system is having problems communicating with your ISP's DNS server. If that's the case post back and we at least have some clue as to where to start looking.

[MichaelG653]

Okay... got some interesting results from the above test... both pages took almost 2 minutes to completely load... the name page took slight less time to load fully than the numeric page (an average of 5 seconds in tests using tabs vs new windows in mozilla), but the numeric page started out faster and then dragged towards the end. But total load time was about the same......... only 5 seconds different, and both took about 2 minutes to load completely.

[kilgoretrout]

Then it's obviously not a DNS problem. Try pinging the above ip. Open a console and run:

$ ping -c3 209.68.45.231

Post your output. While in the console, after trying the ping, run:

$ su
[enter root password]
# ifconfig

and post the output here.

[MichaelG653]

-- 209.68.45.231 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 94.216/94.795/95.561/0.564 ms

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0A:CD:04:ED:1E
inet addr:192.168.2.4 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20a:cdff:fe04:ed1e/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:71888 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:50910 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:92337849 (88.0 MiB) TX bytes:5455961 (5.2 MiB)
Interrupt:19 Base address:0xe800

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:440 (440.0 b) TX bytes:440 (440.0 b)

Here are the results.......lol......... don't have a clue as to what they mean tho...lol... my newbieness is showing.:D

[kilgoretrout]

A little explanation. The ping command sends a packet to the designated address and times how long it takes to get a return packet from the addressee. It's a general measure of network performance and connectivity. Your ping times are somewhat slow but not slow enough to justify 2 minute load times for a webpage. For a broadband connection you should generally get ping times in the 60 millisecond range or better. I'm not familiar with vista but in winxp and earlier you could also run ping from a DOS prompt with simply:

ping [ip address]

If you can do that in vista, you may want to compare ping times.

ifconfig is similar to the windows command ipconfig(also runnable from the DOS prompt) and gives a lot of info about your network setup. I don't see anything remarkable here for your network interface, eth0.

I'm still wondering if that ipv6 module is loading. You can check that by running:

$ su
[enter root password]
# lsmod | grep ipv

If you get output that looks like this:

# lsmod | grep ip
ipv6 257888 14

The ipv6 module is loading. Note, the lsmod command justs lists all the modules currently loaded and the "| grep" part sends that output to the "grep" command which sorts the output for anything containing "ipv" and prints the result.

If the module is still loading, you can try disabling ipv6 directly from within firefox. To do that open firefox and type this in the address field and hit Enter:

about:config

That brings up the firefox configuration settings. In the "Filter" box type:

ipv6

That will take you to an entry that looks like this:

network.dns.disableIPv6 default boolean false

Right click on this entry, and select "Toggle" from the drop down menu which will change the value from "false" to "true". Close firefox and reopen for the settings to take effect. See if that helps.

[MichaelG653]

I ran that command and got: ipv6 257888 12 so will try to disable the ipv6 within firefox and see what that does.

[MichaelG653]

Okay.... I have disabled ipv6 and that seems to have cured the slow loading....lol... now pages are loading as fast if not faster than in vista????? lol.... thanks for the help.... still not sure what I have done or what ipv6 does... but will consider that a subject for further study. and will have to figure out a way to remember this in the future ... am going to install linux on an old computer that was given to me.... (a Dell PIII) just to see what it will do. Thanks again kilgoretrout for putting up with such a rank newbie..........lol......... pcmech members rock in my book!!!

[kilgoretrout]

There's nothing really complicated about ipv6; it's just a new network addressing scheme that is very slowly replacing the current one called ipv4. ipv6 was thought to be needed because we were running out of addresses under the ipv4 scheme. With ipv6, every atom in the universe can have a unique ip address. ipv6 is currently not being used on the internet AFAIK but it is expected that everything will gradually shift to ipv6 someday. In the meantime, it just creates problems for some that try to implement it and "slow internet" is the main complaint.

Linux has been ipv6 capable for the last several years and vista is set to use ipv6 by default which is new for windows users. On linux, ipv6 works fine for most people but a substantial number report the slow internet problem and disabling ipv6 usually solves the problem. I've seen some reports in the press of the same sort of "slow internet" problem being reported by some vista users with instructions for disabling ipv6 in vista. It's an issue that people should be aware of if there OS implements ipv6.

[MichaelG653]

Thanks for all the help on this........ is it possible to completely disable ipv6 in linux, because Opera and Konqueror both are very slow loading or will it have to be disable individually? I tried the about:config in both of those and got error messages.

[kilgoretrout]

You would have to blacklist the ipv6 module from loading or compile a kernel without enabling ipv6 support. The edit to modprobe.conf that I gave you should have stopped the ipv6 module from loading but apparently it didn't work. Recompiling a kernel is probably beyond your abilities at this point and it's very difficult to do on distros like pclos or mandriva because they heavily patch their kernels with backports from later kernels. I don't recommend trying that.

Blacklisting is handled differently by different distros as is module loading. For pclos you can try editing /etc/modprobe.conf again by adding this line at the end:

blacklist ipv6

Reboot and see if the ipv6 module is loaded with lsmod | grep ipv.

[MichaelG653]

Done as you have said and get:bash: smod: command not found. So will now try Opera and Konqueror and see if they are any faster. Thanks for the help

[MichaelG653]

Well that didn't seem to help Opera or Konqueror.... oh well........ mostly use Firefox anyway...lol... thanks again for all the help. :D :cool: