Internet connection terrible at home in Ubuntu 11.10 but great at work
 

Hi, for some reason my home wireless connection is terribly slow in Ubuntu 11.10 (works great in windows) but my work connection is still great. The security settings are definitely different on the connections - any suggestions as to how to diagnose this?

First we need more information about your home connection. What is your home network setup? A wireless router connected to a DSL or cable modem? What speed does your ISP claim to be providing? what are you measuring (and how are you measuring)? Do you have other devices on the home network? They could be using up your bandwidth.

Give us something to work with and I am sure you will gets help in resolving the issue.

Ken

Right now, we have a ethernet cable coming from our modem into our Imac which is being used as a wireless router that our laptops connect to. It works great under windows, but under linux it feels like dial up. I'm pretty sure our connection is 12mbps, but I could check that. Is there anything I could do to find more info to give?

Do you use the same laptop at work?
Try to use a different DNS server (8.8.8.8) or open dns

Kind regards

Yeah, I use the same laptop for work here. How do I switch the DNS or switch to open DNS?

You can set it in the tool you use to make the connection (networkmanager or wicd or...)
Or make the changes directly in
add
At the top of the list
google dns
open dns
Kind regards

Also, how far is the home computer from the wireless access point?

One possibility is wireless errors. Post the output of
use [code][/code] tags around the output

At work right now but will try the above when I get home this evening - thanks so much for the help!

Other things to check:
proxy, firewall, disable ipv6 in firefox.

Kind regards

Ok, so here's that info:

ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 74:e5:0b:30:0e:5c
inet addr:10.0.2.12 Bcast:10.0.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::76e5:bff:fe30:e5c/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:640 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:767 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:528798 (528.7 KB) TX bytes:159696 (159.6 KB)


and...

iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"Thomady"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:1C:B3:75:E5:BC
Bit Rate=65 Mb/s Tx-Power=14 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:on
Link Quality=69/70 Signal level=-41 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:92 Invalid misc:73 Missed beacon:0

---------- Post added 02-02-12 at 10:30 PM ----------

it's about 3ft away from the wireless router so don't think that's the problem :)

Here is what it would have looked like if you had used code tags as I suggested (:p)

I don't know if that excessive retries value is significant since you have such a low number of packets. It could be just a startup If you use the interface for a longer time, and the value continues to increase, I would focus on that.

Otherwise ... can you describe what about it is slow?
Is it every single transaction?
Is it when downloading files or large web pages / pages with images? That might indicate an MTU or a flow control problem
Is it when first trying to get to a site? That would indicate a DNS issue

Looks like it's every transaction. Generally when loading a webpage, it says the title in the firefox tab but the rest of the page takes a few minutes to load. When opening facebook, I get the title image at the top, but the rest of it takes a while.

When trying to reply to this post, I could read your message but the 'quick reply' box at the bottom took a little while to load

Did you made any changes, as suggested in the previous posts?
DNS, proxy, firewall, ipv6....

Kind regards

When you say your work connection is fine, is this on the same laptop with the same wireless interface?

I haven't tried that stuff yet - will have a go tonight when I get home. Thanks