I’ve got a dual boot system on a Pentium III with 512 MB RAM and a DSL internet-connection.
When surfing on the internet, page refreshment is almost instantaneous under Windows, but very much slower under Linux.
In the beginning surfing under Mandriva was painstakingly slow, but got much better after disabling ipv6.
However it it still too slow under Linux.

Does anyone know a remedy for that ?

Thanks in advance,

I would say your system isn't well configured.
It depends on so many things like which browser you use and so on...
And if you only tested with mandriva and you say Linux is so slow.
We need more details to troubleshoot this.


kindly regards

Thanks for your answer!

I mostly use Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and sometimes Konqueror.
Both work slow, Konqueror being the slower one.

But also when downloading my e-mails, with Kmail or Thunderbird, I see it is much slower than under Windows XP.

I even don't know if the fire-wall is on.

Do you use a separate firewall of any kind? Or do you connect directly to the internet? I sit behind a smoothwall firewall and see no difference in access speeds between Linux (MDR 2006) and XP. Wondering if your ISP could somehow be the culprit. Windows all but bends over to expose services to the 'net. Maybe they're expecting this, and your calls from Linux require a bit more processing on their end.

Just a wild thought. My ISP discriminated against entire neighborhoods (poor ones) by shunting all their traffic through a single, older server once. Wouldn't be surprised if it's your ISP somehow.

How does everything else run on the Linux box? Is it slow in general? Or is it just web access that seems unduly slow?

Using my madriva commercial version on my laptop web browsing is much faster for me using my linux partition. I have the full mandriva 2006 installed but unlike XP or other microsoft systems my CPU usage is utterly low (almost 1% 90 percent of the time) during browsing it does increase during page loads to 4% sometimes but rarely more.

Firefox still has issues though I have found. There are good linux addon's to increase your firefox page loads if you have broadband. If your using dial-up then just expect slow browsing with any OS.

more specifics about your system and then more info...

Hi all,

A DSL-connection is a broad band connection, of course. No, to be serious : all OpenOrg programs, e.g. Write or Calc open very much slower then Microsoft Word or Excel.
But surfing on the internet under Mandriva (by the way, an official and paid package) is very much slower than under Windows. My ISP is the official one in my country, and under Windows all goes at (almost) lightning speed.
I don't even know is the fire-wall (Klam) is on. I do not know how to check this, being a complete newbie to Linux.
Very frustrating.
Could someone give me the name of the FireFox add-on that allows faster internet access ? Any help will be appreciated.

Thanks so much,

I would be curious about your router and dns. Go into your routers config and look for your dns servers address. Try
configuring your Mandriva with a static IP and enter your dns info. You can get to the GUI config for your network through the network icon in the kicker or open a terminal su to root then type mcc.

I stand by the suspicion behind my question. Any "official" ISP on planet Earth will of course give Windows the slip and Linux the mud. (...and just what are you up to there?)

Switches are cheap. Switches that get confused when it's not Windows on the other end of line are even cheaper.

Nice you can have equipment that exceeds my own in capabilities by magnitudes. Stinks you have an "official" ISP in your country.

As for specific and detailed Mandriva linux help, are you a member of the club?

cat

I live in Brussels where you can (as an individual user) only use Skynet as DSL ISP.
Although I dislike monopolists, I must say they are good.

I use the (Alcatel) SpeedTouch modem, since many years, and as I told I have no speed problems while surfing under Windows XP.

So, it might be possible there is a configuration problem in Mandriva. But : what configuration files are of importance for surfing ?

My question is : how an there be such a speeds difference when using the same hardware and the same broadband line ?

I already eliminated the ipv6-problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks beforehands,

What are your dns settings under Mandriva? Have you tried pointing Mandriva at the dns servers. As to the comments that ISPs may be linux hostile, sounds fishy to me. Your ISP cares about bandwith usage and what worms/viruses are getting on the network. Not what OS is connecting. With DSL your user name and password should be saved in the modem or in the router. Is this how you system is set up?

What are your dns settings under Mandriva? Have you tried pointing Mandriva at the dns servers. As to the comments that ISPs may be linux hostile, sounds fishy to me. Your ISP cares about bandwith usage and what worms/viruses are getting on the network. Not what OS is connecting. With DSL your user name and password should be saved in the modem or in the router. Is this how you system is set up?

Where can I get to the DNS settings ?
I can't think the ISP is Linux-hostile, this sounds also rather weird to me.

I do save my user name and logon in a .conf-file, I do not know which one exactly any more.

You can get the dns settings from your router. Or your ISPs help section will list what they are. Your logon really should not be stored in your computer but in you modem/router.

I am using the thomson speedtouch 536v6 modem and I must say that network performance in linux is fine, most times better than in windows. Surfing speed perception is something subjective; while internet explorer is often much faster at page rendering than konqueror in my experience I rarely notice it. I suspect the same thing is what bothers you with the other programs, as they start in windows almost instantly, while it takes a few seconds in linux. There are some reasons for that, most of which will remain valid for the near future.

In case you actually have a network problem, I would suggest using traceroute to check your ping times, downloading a big file from a well known fast site (a kernel mirror would suit fine) and measuring the speed or setting the DNS servers directly in /etc/resolv.conf (I had some problems with DNS that may be related to the speedtouch modem).