Gentoo box through a proxy is slow, while others fast

[nekromancer]

Hi,

I have a Gentoo Linux box connected to a small LAN. This lan has a proxy and firewall running as a default gateway which is supposed to provide whatever PCs on the lan a connection to the internet.

Now, the box worked fine and everything until the proxy server was configured to do some filtering. For example when you would download a file, the proxy would download it first, scan it, and then send it to you via the LAN.

Anyways, the problem is , the gentoo box is just too slow on the net. It is using the e100 network module, I know I got the /etc/conf.d/net config file done right cos it sees the proxy and does connect to the net, but it is just slow. Downloads pages at a max of 500bytes/sec.

I tried using the same Gentoo os config on a different machine, same thing. I tried everything concerning the actual network, switches ...etc. It only seems to happen on the Gentoo Box. I tried using Knopix and even GNU/OpenSolaris and they work fine.

I think this maybe some sort of kernel network support configuration ? Something that I missed ?

I even tried using genkernel, same thing.

If anyone may have any idea on how I can go about debugging this problem please do.

[Albert_g]

You may be having DNS resolve time problems.

Check the resolve time using
$ping www.kernel.org (as an example)
to see the time it takes to resolve the ip, and the time it takes to do the same from a working box.

Also you can be having problems with the resolve of the proxy, so you can try to add the proxy name/ip to the /etc/hosts file
so it will be found quicker. remember to update your /etc/resolv.conf to check first the /etc/hosts file and then the DNS


Albert

[nekromancer]

hmm well I can't ping anything the proxy/firewall filters it out. Though I'll do some test on what you said. I have not thought about it before.

My resolv.conf file has the proxy's IP address as the nameserver , which is what it should be. The hosts file .. well I didn't look in it yet, but I configured /etc/conf.d/hostname to have "localhost" .. anyways I'd think /etc/hosts would only have 127.0.0.1 localhost in it. But I will try out what you said and add the proxy inside there.

By the way, is there a way I Can find out why other Linux distros are not having the same problem as my gentoo box ?
I loaded Knopix 3.3 on the same machine and it worked fine. Is there some network settings or maybe kernel modules or something I can take a look at and compare it to my gentoo settings to see if something seems off?

All I can think of is looking at the "lsmod" and trying to see if I didn't add support to some module.. but then again, I did do a "genkernel all" setup and that did nothing.

Thanks for the new ideas though.

[Albert_g]

The importatn thing is the time it takes from typing the commant to where it starts making the ping (i.e., when it prints
$ping www.kernel.org
(... about 1/2 secs time elapesd ..)
PING zeus-pub.kernel.org (204.152.191.5) 56(84) bytes of data.

if the time to know that www.kernel.org is (204.152.191.5) is longer than a couple of seconds you have a resolve problem.

if you want , can also check it with links , so you'll also see the transfer speed.

if this don't helps, check route -n, the iptables -Lvn in the proxy, and so on.

Albert

[nekromancer]

I've checked the nameservers and it resolves the addresses quickly.. instantly actually.
Doing the ping, and also using nslookup. It's pretty fast.

I mean, it sees the nameserver (which is the proxy) it connects to it, but it's still going slow.
I've installed SuSE 10.0 for a change in environment.. Same problem as with the gentoobox.

I'm almost wondering if the the proxy server uses some sort of special packets which my kernel does not support.
When I booted the PC using knoppix 3.3, I noticed AH_PACKET or AF_PACKET in the output of "lsmod" I don't know if this has anything to do with my situation.

Anyways, thanks for your help.