How can I diagnose reason for intermittent slow website connecting

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sofasurfer

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Not sure if this is the right place to post this.
My internet provider is charter.net. I have had intermittent issues with websites taking from 0-30 seconds to connect. Usually around 10-15 seconds when it happens. It seems like after a slow connection occurs that from then on I have no problem...till later (WTH!).
I had charter (spectrum) come out today and check things out. He looked in the junction box and found a couple of signal noise filters. He said that is the problem. He removed the filters and said connection will be much better. Said he didn't know how it was even working with the filters on.
My ISP accound connection speed is set to 100mbps. I had 30 mbps download (according to speedtest.com). Now since he fixed it my download speed is 108mbps. But wait...I still have sites taking 10 seconds or so to connect.
I plan to take my modem back tomorrow and replace it. I have done this 4 or 5 times in the past when I had issues (don't remember what). The guy said he doubts that it is the modem.
So, what do you all think causes this issue?
 


I just restarted my computer and when I bring up firefox it takes about 20 seconds before I could get the bookmarks to come up. Then when I tried to load this webpage it took 10 seconds to come up. Then other sites including this one connect right away. Whenever a site connects, it loads instantly.
 
Probably better in General Computing, moving this there.

Good Luck

Wizard
 
Thanks for moving me.
I will need to learn more about DNS before I can do anything...BUT.
I just had a thought and I restarted my computer and loaded Linux Mint through GRML. This forum loaded instantly. I then came back to Ubuntu and it took about 20 seconds for this forum to load. Then I remembered that when I open some text editors such as nautilus and gedit with sudo in terminal they take about 30 seconds to load the first time. The second time I load them they load quickly.
Hmmm, I see a clue but I don't know what it means.
 
I just found that nemo, nautilus and gedit all open instantly in Mint. And when I come back to Ubuntu all of my tabs in Firefox take a long time to reopen the first time but then they are ok after that.
 
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Is this modem that you have provided to you by your ISP?

It was my experience that the firmware in the modem wasn't being updated.
Once the firmware was updated there weren't any problems.

A IT Tech that had to come to my home to find out why the connection was moving so slow. He explained to me that
some ISP's put a cap on connections.
 
Mine's capped at 100mbps. I have that now that the service tech came out. I had onlt 30mbps for who knows how many years.
I will get a new modem tomorrow, but like I said, in linux mint I do not have this problem. Its something in my Ubuntu installation.
Thanks for your reply.
 
When I first read the problem description, I thought it might be DNS, too.

To the Ubuntu Experts here: If it isn't DNS, could the root of the problem be related to Snaps? (Snaps is the way that Ubuntu packages and loads its applications.)
 
sphen said:
When I first read the problem description, I thought it might be DNS, too.

To the Ubuntu Experts here: If it isn't DNS, could the root of the problem be related to Snaps? (Snaps is the way that Ubuntu packages and loads its applications.)
Click to expand...
If it were just FF that was slow I would say it is because FF in Ubuntu is a snap install. You can install it with a .deb or download it from FF web page and use that one. But if it's other programs as well it may not be a snap problem.
www.omgubuntu.co.uk

How to Install Firefox as DEB on Ubuntu (Not Snap) - OMG! Ubuntu

A short guide on how to install Firefox from a PPA on Ubuntu 22.04 and remove the Firefox Snap. Doing this gets you a faster Firefox that can do more OOTB.
www.omgubuntu.co.uk www.omgubuntu.co.uk
Click to expand...
have you tried any other browsers?
 
Another clue to my situation is that although the above mentioned programs open slow, Google-Earth and Brasero open normally fast. I'm sure other programs are slow but I can not check them all.
So, what is different about Google-Earth and Brasero vs Firefox, gedit, nautilus, nemo, etc?
ALL of the programs I have mentioned are installed the same way...with apt.
 
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sofasurfer said:
Another clue to my situation is that although the above mentioned programs open slow, Google-Earth and Brasero open normally fast. I'm sure other programs are slow but I can not check them all.
So, what is different about Google-Earth and Brasero vs Firefox, gedit, nautilus, nemo, etc?
ALL of the programs I have mentioned are installed the same way...with apt.
Click to expand...
If I had to guess what the differences are, it would be the libraries and different dependencies which could be many.

With some distro's over the years I couldn't use the ESR of FF. Instead I had to go and download the most current version of FF directly from Mozilla and that put a stop to it.

Perhaps @LordBoltar can fill in more of the blanks for you:-
 
sofasurfer said:
Another clue to my situation is that although the above mentioned programs open slow, Google-Earth and Brasero open normally fast. I'm sure other programs are slow but I can not check them all.
So, what is different about Google-Earth and Brasero vs Firefox, gedit, nautilus, nemo, etc?
ALL of the programs I have mentioned are installed the same way...with apt.
Click to expand...
If the dbus.service is not running, that can slow down applications like firefox and some of the others. To check to confirm or discount the possibility, you could run:
Code: 
systemctl status dbus.service
If it's running there'll be a clear indication with a line like:
Code: 
<snip>
Active: active (running) since Tue 2023-04-11....
<snip>
 
The issue is NOT your ISP or your modem. If one of these were the issue, then only sites and data you accessed over the internet would be slow. You claim that opening apps is slow that is 100% a local only issue. So it sounds like you have a multi-boot setup between Ubuntu and Mint. Are they both installed on the same harddrive? if not, then that could be the issue. You say that none are installed with SNAP. You know this with 100% certainty? I know you install traditional apps and snaps with apt-get, and many of the apps we used to install from traditional repos are moved to snap, so are you really, really sure? They are much slower to load that traditionally installed apps. Also you state that some apps open slow while others open quickly, this too suggests snap because not all apps are in snap at this time.

As for some sites connecting slow, that's dependent on multiple factors. It could be how busy their site is, it could be just a matter of browser caching. If you flush your browser cache every time you close your browser, the next time you go to the site it has to redownload everything. And you could have a different setting in each OS.
 
I, too, would suspect either your DNS - CloudFlare's free "1.1.1.1" service is a very good one worth investigating - OR the Snap packages.

Being an AppImage afficionado, I'm not really au-fait with the way Snaps/FlatPaks function. However, if they're anything like an AppImage, the entire thing probably has to unpack & set itself up in /tmp for the duration.....and that's before it can even think about firing-up. This does take time, even on a set-up like mine, with a fast modern CPU, along with plenty of RAM and storage to play with. On older, slower hardware with less in the way of resources, it will take correspondingly longer....


Mike. ;)
 
You could take the simple course and run a ping test. As suggested above by Mike, I'd also would use 1.1.1.1 to start, then by hostname, one.one.one.one. By IP should start getting responses within 10ms, by hostname may take a second or five for replies to start coming back. Once the pings start rolling in, watch for a variance in the response times. If there is, it's more then likely your connection.

Just my 2¢
 
MikeWalsh said:
I'm not really au-fait with the way Snaps/FlatPaks function. However, if they're anything like an AppImage,
Click to expand...

See:

sofasurfer said:
The programs I have mentioned are not installed with snaps.
Click to expand...

(They could be Flatpacks, but I like to think OP would have mentioned that when pointing out they're not Snaps.)

But...

TechnoJunky said:
The issue is NOT your ISP or your modem. If one of these were the issue, then only sites and data you accessed over the internet would be slow. You claim that opening apps is slow that is 100% a local only issue.
Click to expand...

That's the tree I'd bark up.

But the only thing I can think of is to watch a task manager, get some accurate opening times to compare with others, and to check the various logs for errors - perhaps using kystemlog.

I really can't think of a reason for that, unless it's high CPU use - or maybe some change made to the system. Like, if you crank swappiness up to 100 it doesn't actually help - it brings the system to a crawl. Well, it did when I tried it to see what would happen.
 
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