My Suse Linux machine became very slow at browsing the web once i put it behind a linksys router. it times out more than half the time and is just sluggish whether i'm using konqueror or mozilla to browse the web.

Is there some router setting or something that I'm missing to get the speed back up to normal? thanks

You might have a problem with your MTU size. What is it set to under linux?

I typed ifconfig and under eth0 it said MTU 1500 and under lo: it said MTU 16346

How do I change that?

Try ifconfig eth0 mtu 1492

I think that's the proper syntax.

DNS will probably be the issue. What do you have your DNS server set to?

The MTU issue is only set to 1492 if you are connecting to a DSL connection. Cable modems do not need to be set that way.

MrKnisely

linksys uses 192.168.x.x. range. So, if you haven't changed that, just change your SUSE internet settings to reflect 192.168.1.1 (the router's address) as your DNS server as well as gateway, and you should be cooking with gas again. Is it a cable connection? Or, do you have to deal with PPPoE?

Thanks vectordrake - using YAST i set up the gateway to be 192.168.1.1 and then I edited /etc/resolv.conf so that nameserver is also 192.168.1.1 since I couldn't find a way to do that with YAST.
After I did that I restarted eth0 interface.

That was definitely an improvement - before, about half the time I clicked on a link it would just "time out". Now that doesn't seem to be happening at all but it's still only about half as fast or less then when the computer is plugged directly into the DSL box.

Thanks for the help so far.

I also tried messing with the MTU size - to be clear i am using DSL and the linksys router plugs into the wall phone jack. i have two computers hooked up to the router - a windows xp box and a suse linux box. when i set the mtu to 1492 it didn't seem to change anything. bummer.

when i plug my suse linux computer directly to the dsl box then it's blazing fast. so the connection is ok. and the windows box seems fine when it's plugged into the router.

any other ideas?

My idea is to take that crapola Linksys box and throw it as far as you can! I'll throw mine with it! Most consumer grade Linksys routers have a small cache and can't handle a lot of traffic. I know that when I bittorrent with mine, I cannot do more than one torrent at a time, or the router will cause my cable modem to lose sync with the server.

But seriously, no one really mentioned why you'd want to change the MTU. Its because of the header in the packet required if you're using PPPoE to connect. If your DSL is a static IP, you shouldn't have to worry about that so much. Butm if that's how you connect, you might want to make the packet size a bit smaller, like 1484. OR, perhaps you might want to try connecting to your router with a static IP.

...and one more thing to try. I had this problem with Windows XP and my Linksys 10/100 ethernet card. The driver for the Adamtec chipset got stuck in full duplex mode and the router couldn't handle the traffic, so the connection was unbearably slow (I have a super fast connection and this was slower than 28k dialup). When I set the card to function in 1/2 duplex, I got all my speed back.

A few good networking sites for the average Joe:

http://www.homenethelp.com/
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/
http://www.howstuffworks.com/home-network.htm


Good luck.