Why Is My Wireless Connection Slow? How to Fix It?
 

I've never had a slow wireless connection before in my life since installing ubuntu 7.10 about 5 months ago. Recently, however, I've noticed that the net connection on my Opera browser has become slow, out of the blue. What's strange is that using Opera in my XP guest is lightning fast. Why is this happening? Why is Opera in Ubuntu host slow to a crawl compared to opera in XP guest that's very fast? How do I fix this issue?

Have you tried other browsers? firefox, safari? Does it work the same?

Taurus,

Do you know the chipset of your wireless card, or the model? My Linksys WMP54G (with RaLink RT2561/RT61 chipset) worked out of the box with linux too, but the rt61pci kernel driver was really slow...

fedoralinuxjunkie, in reply to your question, here are the results of my chipset/wireless card. Hope you can tell me what's up. Thanks!


x@xx:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
02:07.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
02:07.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
02:07.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T (rev 01)
02:09.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection (rev 05)



and, tajamari, in reply to our question, no, I didn't try other browsers. Maybe I should to rule out the possibility of the browser itself causing the issue.

.

alright, so you have an Intel PRO Wireless 2200BG...have you checked networkmanager-gnome to see what your connection speed is? and the browser may be causing an issue too...

fedoralinuxjunkie, thank you for your reply. Right now, my browser does seem to work normally. I suspect as you have suspected, that my browser, opera, could be the culprit. I did have to clear the browser's cache. On occasion, it does freeze up where I have to restart my whole system. It's a bitch, but, it's the only way I can restart my browser.

Thanks for the concern and added input!!!!

No prob taurus, glad i could try to help :)...i'm going for the CompTIA Linux+ certification soon, so i'm trying to get all the experience I can now :p...Yeah I had the Intel Pro Wireless 2200BG chip on my Acer laptop under Linux and BSD, they both worked flawlessly at full speed...Have you tried maybe using Firefox instead of Opera, and seeing if Firefox does it? Also, have you tried increasing your cache size in Opera?

Personally, I hate firefox. But, just to suit my curiosity I will install it so that the next time my browser does act up, I can use it as backup. Good luck with your certification.

Well there are others besides Firefox...there's Seamonkey, Konqueror, Galeon, Epiphany, and probably some others i'm forgetting about :p...thanks, it's one of many i'll be going for :)

fedoralinuxjunkie, I have heard of these other browsers before but thought they were relegated to windows only and not to ubuntu or linux distros. I'll give them a try and see. Which of these alternative browsers do you personally like and recommend? Thanks.

well...if i had to pick one of them, i would pick seamonkey...the rest were either too unstable or couldn't do what i wanted to do...