Re: slow Internet transfer times (update on workaround)
R G Cottrell wrote:
milton@cam.org wrote:
... dials my ISP whenever I try to access either my E-mail or a WWW
site.
I then installed 'kwuftpd', 'webmin-wuftpd', and 'wu-ftpd'.
PROBLEM:
When I connect to the Internet it takes 6 minutes to load the login
page of the WebMail site I have been using for my E-mail. The
borrowed MS Windows 98 box I have, with FireFox on it, takes less
than a minute. ...
... I've been having a sort of similar problem.
I don't have my system automatically dialing on demand,
(I'm using pon and poff - set up using pppconfig) but my
transfers have been something like a quarter of the speed
I used to get.
> I've discovered that in my case, the speed of serial port
> ttyS1 is _not_ being set to the speed requested in the
> configuration of pppconfig (57600). ...
... I shut down the network connection with poff, and then I mucked
around with mincom for a while, both as root and as a normal user,
and at some point I got this:
grover:/proc/tty/driver# cat serial
serinfo:1.0 driver:5.05c revision:2001-07-08
0: uart:16550A port:3F8 irq:4 baud:1200 tx:0 rx:9659 RTS|DTR
1: uart:16550A port:2F8 irq:3 baud:57600 tx:115 rx:247 RTS|CTS|DTR|DSR
Then I ran pon again and got a decent speed connection. ...
I've investigated a little further since then.
It seems that the serial port will be set correctly for mincom if you
fire it up as root and then enter the configuration menu (CTRL-A O)
then set the port speed and save the configuration and return to
mincom's terminal. Then exiting mincom leaves the port at a decent
speed, instead of 9600bps. YMMV.
I noticed that you got jumped on from a moderate height by Kevin
Mark. There is more than a grain of truth in what he writes. I was
a little surprised when I looked back at the 7 messages you posted
in the space of less than 25 minutes.
Which revision of the Woody CDs did you install from? It'll be
something like 3.0rN, where N<=4.
You might try getting a decent network connection, setting up
apt (edit /etc/apt/sources.list to point to a mirror of the stable
repository (and security)) and apt-get update; apt-get upgrade.
This would bring the system up to date with security and any other
changes to the stable repository since the CDs were made.
The downside is that, because you seem to have installed a lot of
stuff it'll take a while. If you decide to use Sarge and all you have
is dialup like me, it might take days, but since you're using Woody
it probably isn't that bad. Even so, if you have a friend with
broadband it might be quicker and easier to take the box to their
place and connect it to their home lan to do the apt-get upgrade.
(And then compensate them for the use of their bandwidth and
hospitality, of course. :-)
Regards, Rossc.
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