Hello everyone,

I am newbie user, and have shifted to using Debian completely though I use a dual-boot system. There is a single problem, though.

About 80% of the time, Debian gives very slow internet speeds (of the order of max. 500 BPS !!).

System specs:
AMD Athlon 3000+
512 MB DDR
Debian Etch 4.0r3 amd64 installed on 10 GB ext3 partition
Proxy internet connection, password enabled.

The problem is resolved sometimes when I restart. As I said, this happens in about 80% of the sessions. Sometimes, there is no problem at all.

I get very high speeds in Windows. (I am using Windows now to post this message, painful as it is) The slowness is not just with iceweasel browsing. All services... apt-get, updates show the same slow speed.

I was advised to disable ipv6. I did the following steps, each one in turn, restarted, and tested... no change. Internet is still at a snail's pace. Please help.

/etc/modprobe.d/aliases
# alias net-pf-10 ipv6

iceweasel about:config
network.dns.disableIPv6 user set boolean true

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
blacklist ipv6

I suspect it is due to autonegotiate settings. Windows seems to do OK with those but UNIX/Linux don't.

type "ethtool eth0" (assuming eth0 is your primary interface).
See if it is showing "advertised" auto negotiation as yes.
See if it shows your speed at 10 or your duplex at half.
If so it likely autonegotiated to half duplex or 10 Mbps. You can use ethtool to set the options. Usually it is the half duplex that is the issue. You can turn off advertised auto negotiation and force setting to full duplex and speed 100 Mbps. (All this is assuming you're not on a Gigabit network.

Don't think its the autonegotiate settings... Took about half an hour to download 54KB ethtool utility ..

Initial settings were:
As you can see, Speed is 100 Mb/s and it is already on Full duplex. I turned off the auto-negotiation just in case.

Revised settings are:
Still no change in Internet speed...

Further symptoms for diagnosis:
While downloading ethtool using apt from command line, there was a burst of data (~200 bits) each time a new iceweasel window was opened. When there was no other activity, the apt-get timed out and I had to restart it.

This sort of weirdness makes me wonder if this an IRQ problem.

Take a look at /var/log/syslog for warnings / errors
Maybe try booting with the kernel parameter pci=routeirq

Shown below are the most frequent reports from /var/log/syslog ... I'm not sure they're related to the problem at hand.

Menawhile, I discovered that the problem is not just with internet... accessing all network devices is extremely slow.

* My network settings detect eth0 and it is activated.
* The network connections icon on the top panel shows network not connected.
* In Menu>>System tools>>Network connections, the network device is shown as 'Loopback'. eth0 is available from the drop-down menu, but it again reverts to loopback the next time.

Please try editing /boot/grub/menu.lst
Find the line that refers to the kernel you are booting, it'll look something like this:
Change it to read
Reboot. Any better?

Substituted the first with the second

and restarted... no change.