Ubuntu

The Internet has frozen - for Ubuntu

Asked by Ampers

First of all, I have looked at the questions that come up when one asks initially but none of them seemed relevent.

When I fire up Firefox and go onto the Internet everything slows down. Sometimes it takes up to twenty seconds to load up one Internet page.

First of all I thought it was my router, so I bought a new one. Still the problem continued. Then I changed all the cabling and still the problem continued.

During the last week or so. I get pockets of lightening speed, but these pockets never continue and are never more than (less than an hour) long. They may be longer but I have to move on to other things so I am not sure.

If I download software from the repositories I do not notice any problems in speed. I use Firefox version 3.0.7.

My new (Netgear) router is, from memory, a “DG834 (or 836) n” although I am using it in “g” mode as I have a Palm I use at home and it won't access the “n” mode and as far as I know, if I use the “n” mode it is not backwards compatible?

I have an Ethernet cable outlet to my wife's computer, another to my computer and one to our HP printer. The following gear has only been added in the last week so cannot be the reason for the problem. I have an Ethernet Switch box leading off the router in the fourth ethernet slot. In the switchbox I have an Ethernet lead going to the Ethernet cat-5 wall socket in our home computer room. The other part goes to the lounge where it is plugged into a music box over the HiFi so I can organise all my music on the computer and play it over my Hi-Fi. This has been up for two years.

The last Ethernet cable from the Ethernet box goes into my DECT land-line/Skype phone which works even when the computer is off - £1,87 a month for all calls to landlines at any time so I am not about to lose that!

I cannot help think that, from the above picture, that there is a problem with Google but I found this extremely lard to believe because if they were having that sort of problem the press would be full of it.

I am using Ubuntu 8.10, and my computer is a highly spec'd machine costing well over a thousand pounds a year ago. Although my Internet connection is a BT one, we have a business service as the company my wife works for pays for it.

Has anyone had a similar problem with the Internet and if so, is that problem continuing?

I would really appreciate any help with this.

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#1

Wow, wired internet should be pretty lightning fast with all that. I'm guessing it's not just some heavy constant traffic to perhaps your wife's machine? Does your wife also use Ubuntu, another linux or still M$? I'm not sure these are things you can check or would even prove helpful to know.

The main thing i would try out are some completely different Web-browsers, Opera is good but something very much lighter would be worth trying. Is the same problem happening with them?

Could you try another distro, a tiny one just as a LiveCd (ie without installing anything to your hard-drive). I would try Wolvix Cub or Wolvix Hunter for this as they should pick-up your network automatically, they don't take up ram and have an extremely light web-browser called Dillo
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix
This should browse really quite fast but might not cope with YouTube until you've configured it a bit which probably isn't worth doing for this little test.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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Ampers (ampers) said : 		#2

My wife has to use IE on Windows XP Pro, "orders are orders" :-)

There was no need to download another distro, because after Downloading Opera, everything "seems" to be working nice and fast.

Whereas I would like to keep this problem open for a little while, I have programmed the link into my diary for a week from now.

If everything is still working well, I will close the problem. Until my next post there is no need for anyone to this, unless they can come up with any ideas as to why the laest version of Firefox has suddenly decided to behave this way?

Ampers.

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#3

lol, ok. That sounds completely normal. There is a special AddOn for Firefox called "Agent Switcher" and it makes everyone who would know think that firefox is IE heheheh ;)

Unfortunately i haven't found a way around the ActiveX stuff yet tho so some sites are still a bit funny. I know ActiveX is a big security breach in Vista but banks like to use it for 'security' but imo that just further proves the point that ActiveX is dodgy!

The firefox you were using was version 3.0.7? It should be quite fast, mine is. There might be some Add-On or something slowing it down. The "Adblock Plus" usually helps it run a little faster but it souds like you had some blockage somewhere. I wasn't really expecting Opera to make much difference so i'm glad to hear it did because it's certainly a faster answer than the troubleshooting that i suggested later. It is quite good to try out a tiny distro or 2 but mostly for curiosities sake and preferably at a time that suits you, rather than when you've got much else to do.

Anyway, thanks and regards from
Tom :)

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