New to Linux - Ubuntu 11.10 - Internet slow and drops frequently

[blazerboy]

Hey folks, made the switch from windows 7 professional over to Ubuntu 11.10, I really like it, boot times are amazing, everything is SOOO much more responsive than windows was. I mean I have an i7 system 8 gigs of ram etc, i click something in ubuntu and bam its there workspaces are awesome and terminal is well...im getting the hang of it.

Anyways Problem...I have an MSI p67A GD65 motherboard thats for the intel i7 2600k processor. Im using the built in ethernet (dont have a lan card)

So everything is great in windows getting 1.3 mb/s download speed upload is 250 kb/s connections never drop.

After my install of ubuntu bam, my internet is dropping like a madman, terminal editor when i do apt-get works 25% of the time because of the fact that things arent connecting to where they are supposed to. My internet speed is slouching between 50 kb/s download and 200, and upload is like 3 kb/s.

Not sure whats going on but its causing alot of problems for me. Any help would be most welcome

 

[blazerboy]

Oh and its wired not wireless too, my Router is the ATT Uverse 3600 HGV, but im not using wireless on it using a 25 ft cat 5 ethernet cord.

 

[audiovoodoo]

Interesting. I just had a look and see your motherboard used a Realtek 8111E chip for the Lan connection. I know with older version of Ubuntu that people had to install the Realtek drivers to get things working nicely, but I would have thought this would be included by default in 11.10, but it seems not.

You're not the only person having issues and it looks like this guide might be the solution:

http://www.foxhop.net/realtek-dropping-packets-on-linux-ubuntu-and-fedora

Basically Ubuntu loads an older driver which kind of works but drops packets, the updated driver should fix this. I've not got that HW so can't test it for you.

I also see that your MB has Winki linux onboard for quick boot. Just out of curiosity what sort of performance do you get from your network if you boot that? If it's working then the chnages they made to make it work really should have gone back into other projects by now.

 

[blazerboy]

I dont know anything about the winki, ill check it out though,

As for the problem, I have it fixed. You were right what I had installed was the "Realtek R8169" Driver, that doesnt function correctly in Ubuntu 11.10, but infact in 10.04 LTS it functions perfectly fine, or theres a different driver I have no idea. Well What I had to do was scrap the "R8169" Driver for the "R8168 driver". Then it worked awesome, no drops, speed higher than in windows 1.4 mb/s download, could probably be because windows is inefficient update servers etc going off cutting down the DL speeds.

 

[blazerboy]

As for winki I dont think I would be using it as I prefer a full version rather than a simplified "Lite version" Im sure it will be faster though, as it loads in bios. Again ill check it out when I get home.

 

[audiovoodoo]

I was more interested to see if they'd managed to get the right network driver installed with the lightweight OS they supply. If they did then we know there must be a Linux driver that works, seems you proved this yourself.

As for Windows updates - no way they are slow. MS are one of the biggest users of Akami out there and I've done updates at 100Mb sustained when I got my mits on a dedicated line at work once. That said Ubuntu repos do seem to shift too.