Arch Linux

scudelari

Member

Registered: 2007-08-24

Posts: 7

Weird Slow Internet Connection Sharing With ArchLinux Server/Router

Hello Friends,

I'm having the weirdest network problem I have ever seen. To describe the problem is simple.

I have a PC where I've installed ArchLinux. This computer has 2 ethernet network interfaces and I use it as an internet router (and everything server). Connected to this linux box I've got severel other PCs, but they are all windows. In two of them I have Windows Vista and on the others I installed XP.

Everything works fine on the computers that have XP, but the two vista computers have some internet connection problem. It is slow and it doesn't always work. Specially when I try to connect to a google server. I'm pratically unable to open my gmail account from one of the vista computers, and searching is dead slow.

It is, indeed, weird. The connection with the google servers works fine from the Linux box or from the XP computers. It just doesn't work with vista. I have no clue why it does that.

I've read a lot of information from the internet and from the archlinux forum/wiki and I've tried it all.

I've tried to disable the window scaling feature, as suggested, by adding this line:

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_window_scaling

To the rc.local file.

I've also changed some things in the sysctl.conf file:

#
# Kernel sysctl configuration
#

# Enable packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

# Disable the magic-sysrq key
#kernel.sysrq = 0

# Enable TCP SYN Cookie Protection
net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 0

# Disable window scalling
net.ipv4.tcp_default_win_scale = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 0

I've read also somewhere that it could be some kind of problem concerning the IPv6. So I've disabled the IPv6 in ArchLinux by adding changing the modprobe.conf file:

#
# /etc/modprobe.conf (for v2.6 kernels)
#
# disable autoload of ipv6
alias net-pf-10 off

The IPv6 is disabled in the vista computers.

I tried, on my own, to do some other desperate measure. I installed squid in the linux server and I'm using it as a proxy to give the connection to the vista computers, with no real change.

My ArchLinux system is brand new (I updated everything yesterday) and I guess it is well configured, since the problem simply doesn't exists on the non-vista computers.

I'm affraid it is some issue concerning the way vista handles the IP packages (perhaps some new feature) that just causes the linux kernel to go crazy and not respond as it should.

I thank you greatly for your help.

wu.soldier

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2006-12-19

Posts: 22

Re: Weird Slow Internet Connection Sharing With ArchLinux Server/Router

It really sounds weird. Maybe try using wireshark on computers with vista (http://www.wireshark.org/)?