internet connection slow in certain applications

**farcusnz** · 17-May-2011, 08:13

I have recently moved countries and have finally got my internet connected today after a lengthy wait.
I have a pretty fast connection - it's a fibre connection at approx 100Mbps
Between my onu (modem) & computer (Lenovo SL510) I have a cisco wrt120N wireless router.
I'm using Opensuse 11.3 (also dual boot with Win7)

My problem is . . .
When I enter url in firefox (4) I get the message "looking up www. . ." for approx 5 to 15 seconds before anything starts to load.
I also have the same behaviour in konqueror, firefox and yast software manager.

If I use Google Chrome the pages load instantly. Even never before visited pages.

A typical webpage such as Stuff.co.nz - Latest New Zealand News & World News, Sports News & NZ Weather Forecasts takes approx 20 to thirty secs to load in firefox and 3 seconds in Chrome. I can see the same behaviour always whether Chrome used first or firefox used first - so cache does not appear to be the issue.

If I boot into Win7 - websites load instantly there also.

I have updated to the latest wireless drivers for my system - but the behaviour is also evident if I attach a lan cable.

Here is a little info

Code:

 /sbin/ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 60:EB:69:AE:C6:28  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:32 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:104 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:104 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:10774 (10.5 Kb)  TX bytes:10774 (10.5 Kb)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 5C:AC:4C:BE:C0:D7  
          inet addr:192.168.1.3  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::5eac:4cff:febe:c0d7/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:8922 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:5670 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:6616492 (6.3 Mb)  TX bytes:1006090 (982.5 Kb)
          Interrupt:19 Memory:fa0c8000-fa0c8100

Code:

cat /etc/resolv.conf
### /etc/resolv.conf file autogenerated by netconfig!
#
# Before you change this file manually, consider to define the
# static DNS configuration using the following variables in the
# /etc/sysconfig/network/config file:
#     NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SEARCHLIST
#     NETCONFIG_DNS_STATIC_SERVERS
#     NETCONFIG_DNS_FORWARDER
# or disable DNS configuration updates via netconfig by setting:
#     NETCONFIG_DNS_POLICY=''
#
# See also the netconfig(8) manual page and other documentation.
#
# Note: Manual change of this file disables netconfig too, but
# may get lost when this file contains comments or empty lines
# only, the netconfig settings are same with settings in this
# file and in case of a "netconfig update -f" call.
#
### Please remove (at least) this line when you modify the file!
nameserver 202.224.32.1
nameserver 202.224.32.2

Code:

/sbin/route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     2      0        0 wlan0
127.0.0.0       0.0.0.0         255.0.0.0       U     0      0        0 lo
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 wlan0

I'd appreciate any help I can get as I just can't work out how almost my entire system is slow to connect to the internet except for one application (Chrome)

**farcusnz** · 17-May-2011, 08:57

OK - it appears to be IPv6 related.

If I disable IPv6 in Firefox then the problem disappears.
Not sure why not a problem in Chrome - does Chrome not support IPv6 or something?

Anyway - I still need to fix this in applications other than Firefox.
How do I disable IPv6 system wide?

Oh - and why not the problem in windows7?

Is IPv6 support in Opensuse a bit flaky?
When I upgrade to 11.4 (next week) will I likely still see the issue?

**martin_helm** · 17-May-2011, 09:32

farcusnz wrote:

> Is IPv6 support in Opensuse a bit flaky?
> When I upgrade to 11.4 (next week) will I likely still see the issue?
>
It has nothing to do with openSUSE. If your router or your provider or
anything in that chain between your computer and the rest of the world has
no or no good ipv6 support you will run into that trap.
Your system will first try to use ipv6 and if that times out fall back to
ipv4 (as far as I understand for every single request) and that makes it
sluggish.

To disable it system wide pass ipv6.disable=1 as boot parameter and in yast
-> /etc/sysconfig editor -> desktop set KDE_USE_IPV6 to no.

--
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.3 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram

**isemionov** · 17-May-2011, 09:37

hello,

How do I disable IPv6 system wide?

from Yast/Network Settings/Global Options and uncheck "Enable IPv6" save and reboot

Oh - and why not the problem in windows7?

Good question

I suppose win7 imlementation is abit smater ...

When I upgrade to 11.4 (next week) will I likely still see the issue?

Yes, at least I had the same issue and a lot of people on the forum wrote about the same

for me after I have disable ipv6 from yast everything works fine in all applications

**DenverD** · 17-May-2011, 10:04

On 05/17/2011 05:06 PM, farcusnz wrote:
>
> OK - it appears to be IPv6 related.
>
> If I disable IPv6 in Firefox then the problem disappears.
> Not sure why not a problem in Chrome - does Chrome not support IPv6 or
> something?
>
> Anyway - I still need to fix this in applications other than Firefox.
> How do I disable IPv6 system wide?
>
> Oh - and why not the problem in windows7?
>
> Is IPv6 support in Opensuse a bit flaky?
> When I upgrade to 11.4 (next week) will I likely still see the issue?
>
>
to disable in firefox, type:

Code:

about:config

in the address bar, press enter then search for

Code:

disable ipv6

Double click to set value to true if currently set to false.

those three things (two given by Martin) will disable ipv6 in openSUSE,
and Martin is telling you true, it works well in your machine...the
problem is elsewhere..

why not the problem in windows? i don't know for sure, but i GUESS
windows does not do ipv6....i do know that we in Linux have suffered
from the slowdowns for a few years, which is why we learned to disable..

if Win7 was born ipv6 ready then they too would have the _same_ slowdown..

--
dd CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD
[NNTP via openSUSE 11.4 [2.6.37.6-0.5] + KDE 4.6.0 + Thunderbird 3.1.10]
Dual booting with Sluggish Loser7 on Acer Aspire One D255

**martin_helm** · 17-May-2011, 10:38

DenverD wrote:

> if Win7 was born ipv6 ready then they too would have the _same_ slowdown..
>
I have seen some forum posts (for windows vista and 7) with the same problem
- slow internet because of ipv6 and a howto which describes the windows way
to disable it (http://www.home-network-help.com/disable-ipv6.html). Maybe
microsoft learned meanwhile to disable it by default and the problem is no
longer there??
Maybe we should have the same in openSUSE?? Not sure?
On the other hand who knows if there are more people having problems with
ipv6 enabled than people who would be unlucky if it is disabled??

--
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.3 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram

**farcusnz** · 17-May-2011, 10:53

Originally Posted by martin_helm

farcusnz wrote:

> Is IPv6 support in Opensuse a bit flaky?
> When I upgrade to 11.4 (next week) will I likely still see the issue?
>
It has nothing to do with openSUSE. If your router or your provider or
anything in that chain between your computer and the rest of the world has
no or no good ipv6 support you will run into that trap.
Your system will first try to use ipv6 and if that times out fall back to
ipv4 (as far as I understand for every single request) and that makes it
sluggish.

To disable it system wide pass ipv6.disable=1 as boot parameter and in yast
-> /etc/sysconfig editor -> desktop set KDE_USE_IPV6 to no.

--
PC: oS 11.3 64 bit | Intel Core2 Quad Q8300@2.50GHz | KDE 4.6.3 | GeForce
9600 GT | 4GB Ram
Eee PC 1201n: oS 11.4 64 bit | Intel Atom 330@1.60GHz | KDE 4.6.0 | nVidia
ION | 3GB Ram

Thanks for this.
I'll give it a try.

My guess is the weak link is my router. I know for sure it does not support IPv6 as I have Hikari TV (an IPTV platform that uses IPv6) and I have to bypass my router to get the tuner to connect.

**lwfinger** · 17-May-2011, 12:17

On 05/17/2011 12:06 PM, farcusnz wrote:
>
> My guess is the weak link is my router. I know for sure it does not
> support IPv6 as I have Hikari TV (an IPTV platform that uses IPv6) and I
> have to bypass my router to get the tuner to connect.

First of all, check to see if that router has a firmware upgrade.

The problem usually is not that the name server does not support IPv6, but that
it lies about supporting it. If it returns an "AAAA+" record, that indicates
support for IPv6, but if that support is not there, then the timeouts will occur.

Try a manual edit of /etc/resolv.conf, remove the nameserver line that is there,
and add

Code: