slow web browsing, 'all' else ok -- now madwifi issues (see 4th post)

mfsal · 2008-09-03 09:22:19

I'm at a loss, and not sure where to go next with my troubleshooting.

Both Firefox and Elinks are very slow to find the web page (DNS?), but then loads it seemingly ok. Like 3-10 seconds slow. I can't download Firefox extensions at all, I get a bunch of certificate and download errors. Other networked apps are fine, like pacman operations, pings, and bittorrent (I think, that's tough to gauge).

I had an install of Arch a few weeks ago that worked fine in this regard, and other Distros recently as well. The last arch kernel I used at the time was 2.6.26.1. This is on a Lenovo X61s with Intel gigabit and Atheros 5212 wireless, both interfaces experience the problem. Nobody else on the network experiences it, and we're all using OpenDNS.

So since I don't have much invested, I do a quick reinstall without the testing repo, and all is the same. My router has issues with ipv6, so that's disabled, but it's the same deal if I remove the module from the blacklist. I've tried disabling syncookies, and the fix for the window scaling issue.

I'll see how it works on the school network tomorrow, and post some confs once I get X back up and running (yes, I'm sure my hostname is configured properly in rc.conf and hosts). But until then, does anyone have any ideas?

I really hope I can get this working, I just can't get comfortable with anything but Arch.

edit: morning cleanup

Last edited by mfsal (2008-09-04 20:01:18)

finferflu · 2008-09-03 11:00:48

I don't really know what to suggest, but you could try to have a look at this.
Good luck!

mfsal · 2008-09-03 16:10:52

Thanks

I'm on my way out, so I'll try that later when I post my configs. I'm just installing X now, I should be able to get it setup before class starts.

mfsal · 2008-09-04 19:56:53

Alright, I'm peeling some layers from this onion.

The ethernet issue turned out to be a WAN problem that was manifesting itself rather oddly. My desktop was unaffected by speed issues, but after my post it would lose the WAN even though the router was still connected to the circuit and ISP. Later yesterday, everything went away.

At that time, the problem with the wireless got deeper. Once my DNS issues went away, I have connectivity issues revealed, and also on other WAPs at school and a cafe. Basically, the old madwifi driver is having the same issues as ath5k has always had, admittedly not as bad as in the past. That is, wildly inconsistent transfers (ranging from 25kB/s - 750kB/s and back in a few seconds), stalls from 2 - 15 seconds, and tending to settle in at very low speeds around 8kB/s - 30kB/s.

In the past, pings have caused stalls and been slow, but that's not happening anymore. I guess it's a sign of improvement in ath5k. Web browsing can be a little slow to downright painful if a page has a lot of big resources, but generally is ok.

It's just odd that madwifi would act the same way as ath5k all of a sudden. I wonder if they're merging some ath5k stuff into the code.

Nixie · 2008-09-24 17:16:09

mfsal wrote:

Alright, I'm peeling some layers from this onion.
Basically, the old madwifi driver is having the same issues as ath5k has always had, admittedly not as bad as in the past. That is, wildly inconsistent transfers (ranging from 25kB/s - 750kB/s and back in a few seconds), stalls from 2 - 15 seconds, and tending to settle in at very low speeds around 8kB/s - 30kB/s.

My main OS has been Wolvix (slackware based) for the past year & it's internet speeds tend to be comparable to WinXP. But since first installing Arch a few days ago I've been having very similar download problems to mfsal.

I use a small script called modrapi to download files from rapidshare one at a time via wget, and it's here that the slow speeds are most noticable. Normally in Wolvix I get consistently good speeds using modrapi, speeds that are similar to those I achieve in windows using RapGet to download from rapidshare. But when trying it out in Arch I noticed the speeds would tend to stay in the 30-40 kb/s range and occasionally jump upto as high as 450+ kb/s (esp when I open a new page with firefox). The download also seems to stall and spend very long periods at very low speeds as mfsal described in his post.

I'm fairly sure my wireless is configured correctly (I connect using wifi-radar). I've gone through the Arch Optimisation guides a number of times to check for any unwitting errors in my config files & I'm going to go through the optimisation/config guides again in hopes of spotting something I can tweak. I don't believe it's a DNS issue either at this point.

I've also tried using axel from the command line and a new-ish rapidshare download GUI I found called Linux Rapidshare Grabber (python/curl) and the problem remains the same with both of them. It's not so noticable in firefox except during the stalled periods, when even spartan webpages take a while before loading. But when trying to download a file of any size the difference between Arch and Wolvix/Windows is significant.

It would be interesting to find out if this is a madwifi driver problem with certain atheros cards (the madwifi version on Wolvix is older, from slackware 11.0), or if it's just some simple configuration error on my part. If I ever figure out what I'm doing wrong I'll be sure to post it here for anyone else who might have the same problem.

PS. modrapi & rapidshare grabber are only any use to people with premium Rs accounts. They won't help you to download any better/faster from rapidshare as a free user.

Last edited by Nixie (2008-09-28 20:40:01)

mfsal · 2008-09-30 07:44:08

I've found that other distributions using 2.6.26 or 2.6.27 release candidates are slow as well, madwifi or ath5k. Currently I'm using 2.6.25-6 with minimal problems. Transfers are pretty stable at 750K/s, maybe a little less than normal. I don't have any of the wild instability or stalls, though, and I'm not seeing any weirdness like loading a folder of bookmarks in Firefox crossing up a couple of the bookmarks, or pages refusing to load or giving me cpanels when the page is available on other machines.

The one thing I'm having issues with is I can't install firefox addons again. In the past, disabling ipv6 fixes this (my router blows until I get this Cisco setup), but not now.

I have high hopes for the 2.6.28 to 2.6.29 time period, now that Atheros has opened up their HAL.

mfsal · 2008-09-30 08:27:07

Alright, I fixed the Firefox addons issue. I guess blacklisting ipv6 isn't enough, I also needed this in my modprobe.conf

alias net-pf-10 off

I didn't think I needed that anymore, with ipv6 built as a module. I was wrong.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-09-03 09:22:19

slow web browsing, 'all' else ok -- now madwifi issues (see 4th post)

#2 2008-09-03 11:00:48

Re: slow web browsing, 'all' else ok -- now madwifi issues (see 4th post)

#3 2008-09-03 16:10:52

Re: slow web browsing, 'all' else ok -- now madwifi issues (see 4th post)

#4 2008-09-04 19:56:53

Re: slow web browsing, 'all' else ok -- now madwifi issues (see 4th post)

#5 2008-09-24 17:16:09

Re: slow web browsing, 'all' else ok -- now madwifi issues (see 4th post)

#6 2008-09-30 07:44:08

Re: slow web browsing, 'all' else ok -- now madwifi issues (see 4th post)

#7 2008-09-30 08:27:07

Re: slow web browsing, 'all' else ok -- now madwifi issues (see 4th post)

Board footer