Slow browsing using Firefox on Ubuntu
February 22, 2007 — techxplorer
As frequent visitors to my blog will know I use the Ubuntu Linux operating system at home. I also have it on a couple of small servers at MPOW. For quite some time now, probably since I moved to Ubuntu 6.10, I’ve been experiencing very slow browsing with the Firefox browser. Specifically it was taking a very long time to resolve domain names to IP addresses.
It got so frustrating, that recently I implemented a local DNS cache following the directions at the Ubuntu Blog. I noticed some improvement but it was still very slow. In exasperation tonight I did an Internet search to see if anyone else using the same ISP as I do was also experiencing the problem.
It turns out that the culprit wasn’t DNS, or my ISP, or my ADSL connection, the issue lay with Firefox itself.
Firefox was configured to try to use IPv6. IPv6 is a new version of the IP protocol, and it isn’t supported on my network. Therefore what was happening was that Firefox would try to use IPv6, wait until the request failed, and then try IPv4. To fix it I followed this procedure:
- Open a new tab by typing Ctrl-t
(That’s the Ctrl key on your keyboard and the letter t key at the same time) - Enter about:config in the address bar of Firefox
- Enter ip into the Filter: text box
- Look for the network.dns.disableIPv6 entry in the table below the Filter: text box
- Double click the network.dns.disableIPv6 entry
- Restart Firefox
Once Firefox was restarted the domain name to IP address resolution was exceedingly fast, no doubt helped along by the DNS caching server I’d implemented. I’m going to have to remember this little configuration change for next time.
It is entirely possible that this setting is enabled by default on other systems as well. I plan on checking my Microsoft Windows workstation tomorrow, so if you’re experiencing slow browsing you may want to check the configuration setting.
The photo of the network cable above was found using everystockphoto search engine. The photo is hosted on morgueFile.com and was uploaded by user ppdigital.
February 22, 2007 at 10:11 pm
Thanks Corey,
I’m using Windows XP and it worked a treat for me too!
Michelle
March 23, 2007 at 5:21 am
Thanks…I was about to going nuts trying to find a solution
Luchin
May 18, 2007 at 6:45 pm
Thx for the tip! Firefox is running better now on my Kubuntu, although it still isn’t running as smoothly as firefox on my XP machine.
May 18, 2007 at 6:47 pm
[...] IPv6 seems to speed up Firefox on Ubuntu significantly. I found this tip at techxplorer.com Open a new tab by typing [...]
January 25, 2008 at 10:15 am
Thanks so much for the tip! I was about to go bald from pulling my hair out with the S-L-O-W-E-S-T browsing ever!
February 19, 2008 at 2:44 am
You made my day! Thank you so much for the tip!
February 21, 2008 at 10:11 am
Nice find friend…
March 2, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Thank you
March 7, 2008 at 3:33 am
Wowwww… Firefox is now very fast on my laptop (Turion64–Ubuntu) used to be searching and searching for connection with a website, now almost instantanius.
Thanks a lot!!!
March 7, 2008 at 12:54 pm
@ All who have commented
I’m glad the post has helped.
Comments keep reminding me why I post this sort of stuff to my blog.
March 30, 2008 at 3:30 pm
Holy crap man! Thank you so effing much! It was taking me 10 seconds to load Google!
Now all is well (and Google loads almost instantly) !
April 16, 2008 at 10:00 am
What can I say? Such a simple solution - I actually feel like browsing the web again! Why oh why do the folks set Firefox to use IPv6 as default??
Thanks a bundle.
April 30, 2008 at 1:13 pm
[...] Firefox 3 chạy có vẻ chậm, thanh cuộn chạy lên chạy xuống không được mượt lắm. Mình đã tìm được cách tăng tốc Firefox 3 tại đây [...]
June 30, 2008 at 5:01 pm
Great tip! IPv6 is a good thing, but since it’s not available yet (at least to us peons), I figure I might as well disable it. I’ll just have to remember to change it back in 10 years when they get it changed (but then again, I probably will have erased my system by then).