[KLUG Members] Internet speed

[Daniel Hedlund]

Eric,

Eric Beversluis wrote:
> It takes a large amount of time to do anything. E.g., sending a simple
> email from Evolution takes about 30 seconds and connecting to my mail
> server takes about 20 seconds when there is no mail. This doesn't happen
> when I'm using Windows (same machine). I get turnaround on send/receive
> in about 5 seconds and a new email gets sent in 5 seconds.

This is probably a problem related to your DNS settings on your Linux 
box.  The problem usually seems to occur from having a DNS server that 
doesn't exist or is malfunctioning in your list of DNS servers.  Try to 
do a 'ping' from the Linux box to somewhere that normally takes a long 
time and see how long it spends trying to look up the host before it 
finally starts pinging.
$> ping www.google.com

If the ping takes a while to start, have a look at your 
/etc/resolve.conf file and see which nameservers are listed.  I'm 
assuming the list is being generated from the DHCP client.  For each 
nameserver listed, issue the following command:
$> nslookup www.google.com <nameserver_ip_address>

This should help you at least determine if any of your DNS servers are 
responding slowly to your queries, or not at all.

There could be many other reasons, but DNS issues tend to be the most 
common reason for what you've described.

Cheers,

Daniel Hedlund