Slow Download and Upload Speeds

[phosphide]

Recently, I was having some terrible download and upload speeds. AT&T came out and gave me a new router and every device in my house from phones, tablets, and my Windows based PC's are now getting close to the 12 Mbps Download Speed and 1.5 Mbps Upload Speed via our Uverse. Undoubtedly, I have tried everything up until this point to figure out why I am getting such slow speeds on my Ubuntu machine.

Here is some helpful information.

name@box:~$ sudo lshw -C Network
[sudo] password for name: 
    *-network               
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
       logical name: eth0
       version: 09
       serial: 60:a4:4c:56:c2:b3
       size: 10Mbit/s
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=half firmware=rtl8168f-1_0.0.4 03/27/12 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s
       resources: irq:77 ioport:d000(size=256) memory:fa104000-fa104fff memory:fa100000-fa103fff
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 01
       serial: 60:a4:4c:44:45:44
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rtl8192ce driverversion=3.5.0-34-generic firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.72 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
       resources: irq:48 ioport:c000(size=256) memory:fe100000-fe103fff

name@box:~$ lspci | grep -i netw
04:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter (rev 01)

name@box:~$ sudo ifconfig -s
Iface   MTU Met   RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR    TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
eth0       1500 0         0      0      0 0             0      0      0      0 BMU
lo        16436 0      1020      0      0 0          1020      0      0      0 LRU
wlan0      1500 0     17877      0      0 0         13392      0      0      0 BMRU

name@box:~$ ping -c 4 www.google.com
PING www.google.com (74.125.225.243) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from dfw06s26-in-f19.1e100.net (74.125.225.243): icmp_req=1 ttl=55 time=32.9 ms
64 bytes from dfw06s26-in-f19.1e100.net (74.125.225.243): icmp_req=2 ttl=55 time=25.5 ms
64 bytes from dfw06s26-in-f19.1e100.net (74.125.225.243): icmp_req=3 ttl=55 time=28.9 ms
64 bytes from dfw06s26-in-f19.1e100.net (74.125.225.243): icmp_req=4 ttl=55 time=26.7 ms

--- www.google.com ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 25.522/28.529/32.943/2.821 ms

I was hoping someone could shed some light on this issue. Downloading things, especially through the software center, takes a very long time. Apt-get seems to work alright, but still should be substantially faster than what I am getting. Lastly, here are the system specs:

name@box:~$ uname -a
Linux box 3.5.0-34-generic #55~precise1-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jun 7 16:25:50 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

AMD FX-4170 Quad Core (4.2 ghz)
8 gb Patriot Memory (2 x 4)
Asus M5A97 LE R2.0 Motherboard
GeForce GT 620 (Dual DVI, Mini hdmi)
1 TB Seagate Hard Drive (7200)
Asus Wireless-N 300 Mbps PCI

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

[sanderj]

You use wifi? If so, what if you use fixed ethernet?

[varunendra]

Please answer what sanderj asked above. If it is wireless, please follow the "Wireless Script" link in my signature and post back the result as mentioned in the linked post.

[phosphide]

Undoutedly I do not have the ability to connect via ethernet. Here is the output from the script you provided.

http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/5801472/

[varunendra]

First and foremost, please change the encryption in the router to pure WPA2-PSK only, choosing AES instead of TKIP. Currently it is WPA/WPA2 mixed mode.

If that does not help, try -

sudo modprobe -rfv rtl8192ce
sudo modprobe -v rtl8192ce swenc=1

This will be a temporary change and will be lost on reboot. If it seems to help, we can make it permanent.

If none of these help, we may have to compile the proprietary driver like mentioned here : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...8#post12700188

But the encryption in the router should NOT be WPA/WPA2 mixed mode in any case. Do change it first as suggested above and leave it that way.

[phosphide]

Made the change to WPA2-PSK via AES. That was undoubtedly just the default, so I never messed with it. Retested my speed, no change.

Though, the changes made via the command line appear to have worked. I appreciate the helpful and timely response.

I'm assuming to make it permanent I could write a shell script and set it to default at boot? Or do you have another suggestion? Thanks!

[varunendra]

Though, the changes made via the command line appear to have worked.

Actually there is a recommended easier way to make it permanent. In a terminal, just do -

echo "options rtl8192ce swenc=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8192ce.conf

This will create a configuration file "rtl8192ce.conf" in the /etc/modprobe.d directory with the given setting for the driver. The name doesn't matter as long as its extension name is .conf.

Keep it on test bed for some time (or a couple of days if you wish) and let us know if the improvement is real or just coincidental.

If it seems to be a definite solution, please consider marking the thread as [SOLVED].

[phosphide]

Thanks for the help varunendra. Undoubtedly, I spoke too soon. I was getting the speeds that I needed but now, undoubtedly, am back down to where it was. I made the change via the command above as well.

[varunendra]

Undoubtedly, I spoke too soon. I was getting the speeds that I needed but now, undoubtedly, am back down to where it was.

Did you try installing the proprietary driver then? Like mentioned here : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...8#post12700188

[phosphide]

I downloaded the most recent driver from here: http://www.service.asus.com/#!downloads/c1wax

I extracted to the desktop and tried to run make. Got an error.

uname@comp:~/Desktop/Linux$ make
make -C /lib/modules/3.5.0-36-generic/build M=/home/uname/Desktop/Linux modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.5.0-36-generic'
  CC [M]  /home/uname/Desktop/Linux/base.o
/home/uname/Desktop/Linux/base.c: In function ‘_rtl_init_mac80211’:
/home/uname/Desktop/Linux/base.c:319:6: error: ‘IEEE80211_HW_BEACON_FILTER’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/home/uname/Desktop/Linux/base.c:319:6: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in
make[2]: *** [/home/uname/Desktop/Linux/base.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/uname/Desktop/Linux] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.5.0-36-generic'
make: *** [all] Error 2