I just installed the latest Ubuntu distro to get my feet wet in the
world of Linux. So far so good. The one thing that's very noticeable is
the slowness of the web. Every time one goes to a new website, there is
a long pause (30+ sec.) where Firefox says it's looking up the site,
Opera says nothing. If one clicks a link within the site being viewed,
there is no pause. As this behaviour seems to be common to both
browsers, I'm thinking it's a problem with Ubuntu and may be able to be
fixed by tweaking some settings. Can someone point me in the right
direction?

Many thanks in advance.

Chris.

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On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:36:53 -0400, Chris wrote:

> I just installed the latest Ubuntu distro to get my feet wet in the
> world of Linux. So far so good. The one thing that's very noticeable is
> the slowness of the web. Every time one goes to a new website, there is
> a long pause (30+ sec.) where Firefox says it's looking up the site,
> Opera says nothing. If one clicks a link within the site being viewed,
> there is no pause. As this behaviour seems to be common to both
> browsers, I'm thinking it's a problem with Ubuntu and may be able to be
> fixed by tweaking some settings. Can someone point me in the right
> direction?
>
> Many thanks in advance.
>
> Chris.

Chris,

Which DNS are you using?
(cat /etc/resolv.conf )
What are the results of a ping to IP and name ?
Are you using wireless ?

--
Panic, chaos & disorder, my work here is done
http://beginnerslinux.org

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On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:36:53 -0400, Chris wrote:

> I just installed the latest Ubuntu distro to get my feet wet in the
> world of Linux. So far so good. The one thing that's very noticeable is
> the slowness of the web. Every time one goes to a new website, there is
> a long pause (30+ sec.) where Firefox says it's looking up the site,
> Opera says nothing. If one clicks a link within the site being viewed,
> there is no pause. As this behaviour seems to be common to both
> browsers, I'm thinking it's a problem with Ubuntu and may be able to be
> fixed by tweaking some settings. Can someone point me in the right
> direction?
>
> Many thanks in advance.
>
> Chris.

That is usually due to IPV6 getting in the way. Shut it off and the
resolve times should show substantial improvement. If it's on the order of
12 seconds after that you may need 'options timeout:0' in /etc/resolv - it
seems some DNS servers miss the first request or two, so you're left
waiting for a timeout which defaults to 5 seconds.

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repo wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:36:53 -0400, Chris wrote:
>
> 
>
>
> Chris,
>
> Which DNS are you using?
> (cat /etc/resolv.conf )
> What are the results of a ping to IP and name ?
> Are you using wireless ?
>
Yes this could be DNS related. Some time ago a would have said
that this almost certainly was a DNS related problem. But at
the moment IPv6 is also a good candidate.

I've seen this lately with debian etch as well as with slackware.
Im my cases the problem was IP version 6 (IPv6) beeing enabled by
default on the linux boxes but not in my network environment.
If the remote site supports IPv6 the linux system first tries to
make a IPv6 connection and falls back to IPv4 after a time out.

So if your network environment does not support the use of IPv6
you should disable IPv6 on your system to prevent these delays.

I don't know anything about Ubuntu. On a debian etch edit
/etc/modprobe.d/aliases and change the line:
alias net-pf-10 ipv6
to read
alias net-pf-10 off # ipv6

And a reboot after that is probably the most easy way to bring
down your network and all services and bring it up again without
IPv6 support.

Regards,

Kees.

--
Kees Theunissen.

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Kees Theunissen wrote:
> repo wrote: 
> Yes this could be DNS related. Some time ago a would have said
> that this almost certainly was a DNS related problem. But at
> the moment IPv6 is also a good candidate.
>
> I've seen this lately with debian etch as well as with slackware.
> Im my cases the problem was IP version 6 (IPv6) beeing enabled by
> default on the linux boxes but not in my network environment.
> If the remote site supports IPv6 the linux system first tries to
> make a IPv6 connection and falls back to IPv4 after a time out.
>
> So if your network environment does not support the use of IPv6
> you should disable IPv6 on your system to prevent these delays.
>
> I don't know anything about Ubuntu. On a debian etch edit
> /etc/modprobe.d/aliases and change the line:
>   alias net-pf-10 ipv6
> to read
>   alias net-pf-10 off # ipv6
>
> And a reboot after that is probably the most easy way to bring
> down your network and all services and bring it up again without
> IPv6 support.
>
> Regards,
>
> Kees.
>

Bingo!

Thank you. The problem is definitely fixed.

Chris.

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ray wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 10:36:53 -0400, Chris wrote:
> 
>
> That is usually due to IPV6 getting in the way. Shut it off and the
> resolve times should show substantial improvement. If it's on the order of
> 12 seconds after that you may need 'options timeout:0' in /etc/resolv - it
> seems some DNS servers miss the first request or two, so you're left
> waiting for a timeout which defaults to 5 seconds.
>

That indeed was the problem and Kees showed me how.

Chris.

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On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:48:48 -0400, Chris wrote:

> ray wrote: 
>
> That indeed was the problem and Kees showed me how.
>
> Chris.

Did IPV6 take care of the whole problem or did you need to 'patch'
/etc/resolv? On systems I've seen, there was a 45 second delay. IPV6
knocked that down to 12 seconds and /etc/resolv timeout reduced that to
nil.

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On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 16:39:59 +0100, Kees Theunissen wrote:

> I don't know anything about Ubuntu. On a debian etch edit
> /etc/modprobe.d/aliases and change the line:
>    alias net-pf-10 ipv6
> to read
>    alias net-pf-10 off # ipv6
>
> And a reboot after that is probably the most easy way to bring down your
> network and all services and bring it up again without IPv6 support.

Thank you Kees. I too had been frustrated by slow browsing. This made it
very snappy again. I'm using sid.

Steve

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ray wrote:
> On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 21:48:48 -0400, Chris wrote:
> 
>
> Did IPV6 take care of the whole problem or did you need to 'patch'
> /etc/resolv? On systems I've seen, there was a 45 second delay. IPV6
> knocked that down to 12 seconds and /etc/resolv timeout reduced that to
> nil.
>
No. IPV6 took care of the problem completely. Response is almost
instantaneous now.

Chris.

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On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 20:24:39 -0600, ray wrote:

> Did IPV6 take care of the whole problem or did you need to 'patch'
> /etc/resolv? On systems I've seen, there was a 45 second delay. IPV6
> knocked that down to 12 seconds and /etc/resolv timeout reduced that to
> nil.

Hi Ray,

I just applied the patch you mentioned. I had already turned off IPV6 and
it was faster but still seemed too long to wait at times. Now it is
instantaneous.

Thank you...Thank you...Thank you...Thank you...Thank you...Thank you...

Steve

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