Sorry I am brand new to Linux. I am running Slackware 12. and the web pages take longer to load and downloads. When i am running XP Pro on the same machine the internet is much faster. I am using Comcast broadband. Do I not have something configured right or is this just Linux?



file:///home/mattc/Desktop/person-counter.pl

You'll need to supply more info than that. Is this machine the only one you've got? How do you communicate with Comcast? You're going to have to do a bit more hard coding to set your machine up to work. One basic item will be to add a 'nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' entry to your resolv.conf file (in the /etc directory). You need to find out what the nameserver address is from your ISP. Also, how does the Windoze box get its IP addy? You'll need to set something similar in Linux.

Ok, go do your homework.

Regards,
Geoff.

You should do as wheelsg said and pick a good nameserver to put in '/etc/resolv.conf'.

Also, I read on here somewhere that Comcast may be practicing 'traffic shaping' which may be one reason for this.

Comcast does filter traffic, but it shouldn't affect linux unless you're running bittorrent or one of the other applications Comcast restricts. I have Comcast and the internet works just fine, so that isn't the problem.

Comcast works fine with Linux. Even bittorrents are usually only restricted on uploads (sometimes not even then).

Use Linux more. Perhaps it was just a bad day for your local comcast network. And yes, make sure you are using good nameservers, but if you are using DHCP this shouldn't be the problem.

EDIT: Weird, must have had a problem on the server, my response took about an hour to show up.

Does your installation have the ipv6 kernel module enabled? Unless you absolutely need IPV6 capability for your network keep the module from loading at boot with the following entry appended to the end of your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist :
Reboot after making that entry.

Also if you're running Firefox/Iceweasel for the web, type about:config in your address bar and search with the string 'ipv6' (no quotes of course). I believe it is network.dns.disableipv6 that you enable to speed up browsing (anybody feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).

More info about IPv6:
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.dns.disableIPv6
Although on that page they mention the alleged speed-up is possibly just a placebo-effect.
My own experience however is that it works. Especially on older machines.

Haven't noticed *any* difference with IPv6 enabled but I think only millisec timestamped stracing and w/o caching anywhere could prove if it matters.

I find this thread interesting. I am about to retire this AMD 233 hz K6, 192 meg ram, 8 gig hard drive, Mandrake 10.1, KDE 3.1 system. Partly because I came by an old Dell, an only slightly faster Pentium, 128 meg Ram, 8 gig HD, Windows 98, and I.E.. I had really planned to cannibalize it for parts, but my wife decided it was much faster web surfing than ye olde Power Mac and would load websites neither the Mac nor this system would. It is also much faster with no set up than this system. I just plugged in the ethernet cable and turned it on. It hadn't been set up for the internet at all.

I have been on Road Runner with Bright House for about 4 years. In that time, I don't think I have talked to anybody that would know what a nameserver address was, let alone be able to give it to me. When I have trouble, they can't even tell their modem is bad until I reboot to Windows. The one guy was amazed to find a computer with 2 different operating systems. Another one said I didn't to reboot, and then tried to get to My Computer from the K-star. When they first connected me up, the guy had a disk with all the info Connection Wizard needed, and let it do all the work. I forget how I got it, but whoever I asked couldn't tell me the name of SMPT server.

New system, AMD 64 3500, PCChips AG13+, 1 gig ram, 80 gig HD, OS? Maybe Debian. All for under $200 reusing the CD burner, floppy and case.

all very interesting answers thank you very much I guesse I need to read more and learn how to type this stuff in. windows has made me a lazy dummy. let it be noted that i am not dual booting or anything. I unplug my HD and then plug in my Linux HD and turn the power on then the internet is significantly slower.

Could it be a difference in the hard drives?

It's possible that your network card is not auto-negotiating to a fast speed under Linux. Try this (as root):

mii-tool eth0

It should say something like "eth0: negotiated 100baseTx-FD, link ok" which would be full-duplex 100Mbps. If not, you may want to try forcing a fast media speed with a command such as "mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD eth0". See the mii-tool manpage for more info.

I appreciate the time everyone has taken to address this issue, but I'd like to add a little more to the topic.

I have an Internet connection which is well-established and is part of my "workbench" where I bring in various computers from the field, connect them, and perform OS updates, downloads, etc. This connection works flawlessly and very quick with Mac OS 9.x, Mac OS X, Linux Ubunto, Linux Slax, Windows 9x, Windows ME, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows Vista. However, this same connection with Slackware v12 is awful even after taking the steps outlined in this forum and disabling ipv6. Even using lynx is horrendous. I've applied every suggestion from this post (and others) as well as installing the Slackware 12 onto an entirely different system - same results. I have noticed that even pings are erratic and take a long time to initialize - even though all the nameservers are correctly assigned in /etc/resolv.conf

Right now I have two systems - totally different in EVERY way (hardware) other than the fact that they both have Slackware 12 installed on them. Both computers have the same exact extreme slowness issue with the Internet. I also have a secondary ISP connected. These problems show up on that secondary ISP connection as well (though the problems are absent on any other OS).

mii-tool shows everything is perfect.

If anyone has any other ideas on what the problem might be, I'd sure appreciate any ideas that I might try!

Thanks!

You could provide more detailed info about this, to have a starting point. Tell us the commands you use, literally, and explain us what you try to ping, how, and what erratic means. For example, if you notice a delay somewhere, tell us where it stops. But, like I said, it's important that you give us a specific example and explain us what goes wrong as precisely as you can, as if we were looking at your terminal directly. Include command output and all that.

Please post the output of `lspci -vv`, `lsmod`, `ifconfig -a`, and `route -n` as root and post your /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf files. Please use the [_CODE] and [_/CODE] tags (omitting the _) to surround the output of each command to make it easier to read.