Problem with Internet speed in laptop in Linux Mint

[Michael Butash]

Agreed, bypass the wireless.  The 2.4ghz (802.11b/g) space tends to be
uber-saturated these days everywhere.  You only get 3 real
non-overlapping channel spaces with it too.  Might just be that...

I had resolved a long-standing issue with performance on cox's network
by setting a sysctl for the kernel bypassing normal tcp windowing.  Add
this to your /etc/sysctl.conf:

# Turn off the tcp_window_scaling
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 0

then do:

sudo sysctl -p

You can always comment back out if it doesn't work or you experience
problems, but I've had none using it for months now.

I had a lot of issues mostly with apt-get'ing packages scaling down to
almost a dribble (measured in bytes) consistently on several computers
across town I somewhat support.  This resolved the issue for those and
myself at least.

Otherwise, have cox check your levels - they're known for not being
terribly proactive with resolving cable issues, even though they poll,
graph, and historically record levels for _all_ modems internally.
Particularly ask them what your transmit/receive power is at, as well as
signal to noise floor, values can be easily found online for what they
"should" be, I don't remember since I haven't worked there in ages.
CSR's get idiot red/green lights to at least tell you this much.  They
know how bad their cable plants are or where they have problems, they
just won't fix for cost as most consumers won't notice anyways.  Squeaky
wheels get oiled...

This is cox's internal speed test site off a nap in vegas for them, test
your speed here and complain accordingly.

http://test.lvcm.com/

-mb


On Thu, 2009-08-06 at 09:16 -0700, Stephen wrote:
> i have found that in hybrid networks (ipv4 and ipv6) without any
> routing or configuration things get weird. so unless i plan on
> adopting ipv6 i usually just disable it.
> 
> also i would try a direct cable connection to the router and see if
> there is a speed change. this will let you know if you need to work on
> the wireless configuration or something else im sure. also what is her
> wireless card/laptop make/model (i have had weird issues with wireless
> drivers under Linux sometimes being weird)
> 
> On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Renaton Patron<linux at patrondesigns.com> wrote:
> > Hi all, I just convinced my wife to switch to Linux/GNU from Vista after her
> > laptop was extremely slow and infected with spyware. I use Ubuntu 9.04 in my
> > desktop, but I tried Linux Mint sometime ago, and I thought it can be used
> > as an easy transition from windows, also since it is based in Ubuntu I can
> > help her to migrate.
> > The installation was very fast, and at the end everything was working, she
> > was happy. The only thing we noticed was that the Internet was slow. Slower
> > even than her old Vista. We have been using the 1.5Mb Cox service and we
> > felt it was slow but we could manage. So since I wanted her to keep using
> > Linux Mint, I called Cox and upgraded our Internet to the 13Mb.
> > Now, my question. My desktop (that uses a PCI wireless card) reports a
> > download speed of about 8.5Mb (according to a Cox technician is not that
> > bad, since I'm behind a router) but my wife's laptop is getting 1.65Mb
> >
> > Here's my wifes wireless card info using ifconfig
> >
> > wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:44:b9:27:ae
> >           inet addr:192.168.1.134  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
> >           inet6 addr: fe80::216:44ff:feb9:27ae/64 Scope:Link
> >           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
> >           RX packets:237296 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
> >           TX packets:174393 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
> >           collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
> >           RX bytes:326221172 (326.2 MB)  TX bytes:26815061 (26.8 MB)
> >
> > If it is any help, I'm using a Linksys WRT54Gv8 / GSv7 with a DD-WRT v24
> > RC-5 firmware.
> >
> > After wondering on the forums I think my problem is with IPv6. Has anybody
> > had a problem with IPv6? How can I disable IPv6 on Jaunty (Mint 7 is based
> > on Jaunty0? Ive checked some tips from the forums (upgrading the kernel,
> > using option ipv6.disable=1  see:
> > http://www.ubuntu-inside.me/2009/04/howto-disable-ipv6-at-ubuntu-jaunty.html)
> > but nothing.
> >
> > Any help with this problem will be greatly appreciated.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Renato
> >
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> 
>