A major problem with my wireless connection

[BlueDaisy]

Oh my, I similtaniously posted with you, snowhog.

Here's how it goes: my family uses Earthlink as the internet provider. When they signed up, this router I spoke of was given to them, as well as instructions to configure it. They followed all instructions, and all was well. All my family used windows or a mac, and it was I who introduced linux to the household. Apparently, at the start, I complained about the problem, but they reluctantly pushed me away, saying "the problem isn't the internet connection - It's perfectly fine" and they also refused to see the router configuration, scared that I might blow it up, or anger the internet provider. No trust at all... Windows/Mac, plus the router just works for them (although I'm slowly understanding their troubles with windows)

Like I said, using fedora bypasses the problem - but it's not good in other areas, such as its weak repository, problems with using NVIDIA drivers, and other things. In this way, it made me think my problem occurs elsewhere.

[Teunis]

Hmm yes, one can choose his friends but not his family

At least you can take comfort from the fact Fedora does not show this issue, so there must be a Linux solution.

The fact you have no issues with torrent files points in a direction, torrents are often coming in parallel from many different IP's, each of which delivers a small part of the bandwith.
This reminded me of an issue I had several years ago with my modem, when a fast server (like apt-get) was able to serve a single thread at a speed higher than my account was set at the connection would break.
By having a different download in parallel to the fast one I could limit it's speed sufficiently to prevent the connection breaking, try an http and ftp one in parallel.
In my case the problem was fixed in a firmware update for the (Fritz!box) modem.

So for a starter I would suggest you find some utility or setting that can limit the download speed to a manually set value below the maximum the account allows.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=39034
http://en.blogeek.ru/limit-upload-do...app-in-ubuntu/

A site with large files for download tests:
http://www.glasvezel.nu/speedtest-se...0mb-1000mb-bin

An ftp server with large files:
ftp://ftp.xs4all.nl/pub/test/

[BlueDaisy]

I'm going to start by limiting my download speed. Is this part of the thread exactly how to do it, or do I need to do large substitutions into the code?

Re: how to limit apt-get download speed
I found a better sollution.
create file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/76download with content:

Acquire
{
Queue-mode "access";
http
{
Dl-Limit "25";
};
};

That limits apt-get to 25KB/s

[BlueDaisy]

Teunis,

You hit the problem exactly when you showed me the program "wondershaper." I downloaded it, and used this command:

sudo wondershaper wlan0 2400 300

I configured software sources to the main server, and then everything worked perfectly, limiting to 300 kilobytes a second - regular downloads, apt, flash (somewhat) and software repositories. I didn't need to mess with apt files either.

Apparently, my internet connection was "lying" to my computer - it said it was connected at 54 megabits a second, when in reality, downloads max out at 2.5 megabits a second. When it tried to go higher, it must have annoyed the router to really slow the download speeds. I just hope this configuration stays, even if my computer restarts.

Thank you so much! Now I might try 12.04 alpha one...

[kc1di]

Teunis,

You hit the problem exactly when you showed me the program "wondershaper." I downloaded it, and used this command:

sudo wondershaper wlan0 2400 300

I configured software sources to the main server, and then everything worked perfectly, limiting to 300 kilobytes a second - regular downloads, apt, flash (somewhat) and software repositories. I didn't need to mess with apt files either.

Apparently, my internet connection was "lying" to my computer - it said it was connected at 54 megabits a second, when in reality, downloads max out at 2.5 megabits a second. When it tried to go higher, it must have annoyed the router to really slow the download speeds. I just hope this configuration stays, even if my computer restarts.

Thank you so much! Now I might try 12.04 alpha one...

Glad you got it sorted out BlueDaisy Congratulations for sticking with it.

[SecretCode]

Apparently, my internet connection was "lying" to my computer - it said it was connected at 54 megabits a second, when in reality, downloads max out at 2.5 megabits a second. When it tried to go higher, it must have annoyed the router to really slow the download speeds.

Well, as far as your computer knows the internet is your wifi connection which is theoretically 54Mb/s. The problem isn't that it should have known that the rest of the internet might be slower (here in SA we can run over a 4Mb/s ADSL line but still hit worse congestion on the international submarine cables) - the problem is how the TCP/IP sessions handle reports of congestion - which is basically the receive window size thing I mentioned earlier. There's probably still some kind of bug, exposed in your particular configuration but not in general for *buntu, but wondershaper is effectively preventing you from hitting that bug.

Glad it's fixed!

[Teunis]

Nice to see how wondershaper does it's job :cool:

As said in my case it was fixed by a firmware update for the modem so I wouldn't necessarily put the blame on Linux or Ubuntu.

[BlueDaisy]

Thank You. You can mark this post solved.

[SteveRiley]

Thank You. You can mark this post solved.

Actually, we've enabled that feature for all users, so it's possible for original posters to mark their threads as solved. You'll see this in the "Thread Tools" menu at the top of each thread: