Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

[avocado]

Hullo!

Thanks so much to everyone involved in Kubuntu - Hardy Heron with KDE 4.1 is working well for me and I am very impressed and grateful.

I have a problem tho;

The PC I have running Kub with KDE4 is downloading from the internet way slowly - less than 2000kbps. In both Konqueror and Firefox and Ktorrent. It was fine pre-upgrade in dapper.
The other two PCs I have (one running dapper and one XP) connected to the same network are downloading at the full rate of 8000kbps.
(tested on speedtest.net).

Can anyone suggest what might be the cause of this, please?
I notice that I am only getting about 50% signal strength on my wireless card (Belkin RT2500) even tho the router (NETGEAR DG834GT) is very close to it.
Could it be some sort of driver issue?

Thanks for looking.

[mjtolsma]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Difficult to say.

First thing which comes to my mind: is your wifi connection only on the 802.11a of 802.11b standard? If so, there is indeed a problem with your driver (as it should be 802.11g).

And the strength of your signal does influence the speed of your connection.

By the way, the speed of 802.11g is only the speed of the radiosignal. As the signal is half-duplex (the router and the computer can't transmit simultaniously), and there is errorcorrection and retransmission, speeds are always lower then the"speed of the radiosignal. But it depends how far you are from the router.

But it is strange that Windows has another speed than Kubuntu.

[avocado]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Thanks for the reply.
Its all set to 802.11g.

Strange indeed.

[avocado]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Good thinking!!

Yup, sure enough ... over a cable I have full speed down and up.
Therefore it must indeed be the card/driver.

Can anyone suggest how I should proceed?
I have searched for info on my particular card but found nothing relevent.
Belkin RT2500 aka F5D7010.
There are no linux drivers on the belkin website.
Is it time for ndiswrapper?

[mjtolsma]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Look at

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/190515

In June, someone reported the same problem you have (1 mb speed), and found a solution. Look at the posts of June 2. and later.

[avocado]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Thanks for the pointer.

I followed the link provided.
This would seem to be a known problem.

The bandwidth was mis-configured at 1mb.
To change this I tried the suggested fix of;
'sudo iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M'
This worked in so far as it altered the bandwidth to 54mb.
Upload speeds went back up to full rate. Yay!
Dloads however went down even further to 200kbps. Aaagh.

So I then tried the suggested;
'sudo apt-get install linux-backport-modules-hardy'
I got the following error;
'Couldn't find package linux-backport-modules-hardy'

So then I followed the suggested procedure here;
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=4894088
I rebooted with crossed fingers and toes.
No wireless connection at all.
Zilch. Zip. Nada.

This really sucks.
How do I undo what I have done to get my slow connection back?
Then how do I get my proper speeds back?

Any help is much appreciated as I am now at a loss for where to go next.

[mjtolsma]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Sorry that that didn't help for the download speed (I guess you don't care much for the upload...).

try to undo the blacklisted modules:

sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

and then remove the lines you have added.
blacklist rt2x00lib
blacklist rt2x00pci
blacklist rt2500pci

It would seem that the new driver doesn't work at all, perhaps this helps. Also, you could try the ndiswrapper.

By the way, in another post, the sources.list (which adept uses) wasn't completely updated to hardy. What is the status on your computer? Do

sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list

to verify if everything is hardy and the security universe is enabled (and at the end of the list ). Perhaps you can try this first?

[avocado]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Thank you.

I did undo the blacklist but to no effect.
Still nothing from the card at all.
No lights nor recognised by Kubuntu at all.


I have run sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list as you suggest.
I get this;
---------------------------------------------------------
deb cdrom:[Kubuntu-KDE4 8.04.1 _Hardy Heron_ - Release i386 (20080702)]/ hardy main restricted
# See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to
# newer versions of the distribution.

deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy main restricted
deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy main restricted

## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the
## distribution.
deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates main restricted
deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates main restricted

## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## universe WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu security
## team.
deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy universe
deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy universe
deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates universe
deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates universe

## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu
## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to
## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in
## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu
## security team.
deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy multiverse
deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy multiverse
deb http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates multiverse
deb-src http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-updates multiverse
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I think it says everything is hardy but I'm not sure about the security universe ..?

Where next?
Thanks for taking the time and all.

BTW, ... Max upload speeds are good!

[mjtolsma]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

first of all, try
sudo modprobe wlan0
and then reboot

Concerning your sources.list, I have a few extra repositories. Try to add to following at the end of your file:

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy-security multiverse

One word of warning: I don't know if you have a translated version of kubuntu (your sources.list suggests that you have, right?), so I don't know if these repositories have a side-effect (conflicting packages?).

[avocado]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Thanks.

Tried - 'sudo modprobe wlan0'
error returned;
'FATAL: Module wlan0 not found'

I then added the repositories you kindly supplied to /etc/apt/sources.list.
What do I do then?

I am using the UK English version.
So translation not a prob.

[mjtolsma]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Then look for updates via the adept manager. Though I'm not sure if that will fix your problem.

The output of the modprobe suggests that the wifi card could not be found at wlan0. But do you remember if it was wlan0, or perhaps ath0?

If that fails, try ndiswrapper. You can download it via the adept manager.

PS: now I realize that gb stands for Great Britain

[avocado]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Well, I have tried all things you have kindly suggested.
Thank you so much for your help.

I cant get ndiswrapper to work either as the drivers on the cd will not install
I am now thoroughly pissed about it all.

2 days spent banging my head against this.
The same card worked straight away no probs in Dapper, (admittedly with KDE3 - I don't know if this makes any difference) - this seems like a backward step.

I have had enough.

Can anyone suggest a card that will work, please?
I'll buy that and put it in.

[mjtolsma]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Why don't you change your installation to kde 3.5.9? That worked fine with you, didn't it?

I had 4.1 installed, but changed back because of some instability issues.

I have a Atheros 5007 wireless card, but I had to use madwifi drivers to get it to work. Perhaps someone else has an idea?

[mjtolsma]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Sorry, what I meant was that it doesn't work "out of the box": you have to manually install the drivers in order to work.

[avocado]

Re: Its all good : except my internet speeds are way down

Hokay.
I have calmed down now.

mjtolsma ;
Thats a good possible option.
I may go back to KDE 3.5.9.
It seems a shame as there is so much that really rocks about KDE4. It looks great, hardware support is fantastic (my wifi card aside) with graphics cards, printers and new harddrives recognised and working immediately, font management is awesome, and so on.
However, my smug Linux-based bliss has been ruined by this wifi card challenge. I just don't need it!
Anyway, maybe the switch back might suit.
I'll stick with the untidy cable connection while I give it some thought.

In the meantime I'd better get on with some paid work or I'll be out on my ear

Cheers!