Slow browsing using Firefox on Ubuntu

February 22, 2007 at 9:32 pm | In Thoughts | 30 Comments
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Network CableAs 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:

  1. 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)
  2. Enter about:config in the address bar of Firefox
  3. Enter ip into the Filter: text box
  4. Look for the network.dns.disableIPv6 entry in the table below the Filter: text box
  5. Double click the network.dns.disableIPv6 entry
  6. 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.

30 Comments

  1. Thanks Corey,

    I’m using Windows XP and it worked a treat for me too!

    Michelle

    Comment by Michelle McLean — February 22, 2007 #

  2. Thanks…I was about to going nuts trying to find a solution

    Luchin

    Comment by luchin — March 23, 2007 #

  3. 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.

    Comment by Wouter Veugelen — May 18, 2007 #

  4. [...] IPv6 seems to speed up Firefox on Ubuntu significantly.  I found this tip at techxplorer.com Open a new tab by typing [...]

    Pingback by Wouter Veugelen blog » Blog Archive » Faster Firefox browsing in Ubuntu — May 18, 2007 #

  5. 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!

    Comment by Curtis — January 25, 2008 #

  6. You made my day! Thank you so much for the tip!

    Comment by Brian — February 19, 2008 #

  7. Nice find friend…

    Comment by steve Jobs — February 21, 2008 #

  8. Thank you :)

    Comment by Janus — March 2, 2008 #

  9. 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!!!

    Comment by Max — March 7, 2008 #

  10. @ 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.

    Comment by techxplorer — March 7, 2008 #

  11. 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) !

    :)

    Comment by Mike — March 30, 2008 #

  12. 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.

    Comment by Gizzard — April 16, 2008 #

  13. [...] 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 [...]

    Pingback by Bắt đầu với Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 « Moriator - I can do it! — April 30, 2008 #

  14. 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).

    Comment by Brad Landis — June 30, 2008 #

  15. Many many thanks.

    Comment by SB — July 28, 2008 #

  16. Thanks man!

    Comment by Dave — August 24, 2008 #

  17. Thanks from me too.

    Comment by Geertjan — September 8, 2008 #

  18. [...] the author of Tech Explorer found out about it and wrote a post about how to disable this ‘feature’. It made Firefox about a hundred times more [...]

    Pingback by Firefox slow on your netbook too? disable ipv6! | Roy Tanck's weblog — October 31, 2008 #

  19. Great, for the last one month or so i was facing similar problem and have switched to other browser. But this tweak has solved the problem. Thanks for the information.

    http://thatlovedflower.blogspot.com

    Comment by Sudam Panigrahi — November 1, 2008 #

  20. [...] Tech Explorer posits that firefox 3 is slow because it uses ipv6 by default and falls back on ipv4 since his network doesn’t support ipv6. Well I do know our networks here still hasn’t switched over to ipv6 (I wonder when will that be) so I’m quite sure his circumstances fit well with my own situation. [...]

    Pingback by Making Firefox 3 a Bit Faster | kaliwanagan — November 18, 2008 #

  21. Thank you!!! This is great, I was really bummed out because I just installed Ubuntu and Firefox and it was so slow. This fixed it!!!

    Comment by Beth — November 22, 2008 #

  22. Thanks a lot for this advise. I googled for “ubuntu slow firefox” and this was the first link google suggested, and it worked!

    Comment by Kaisa — November 30, 2008 #

  23. it works!

    Comment by anonymous — December 7, 2008 #

  24. Thanks a ton. That did the trick!

    Comment by Melk — December 17, 2008 #

  25. Thank you very much! What a difference this has made to my ubuntu browsing!

    Comment by Allan — December 18, 2008 #

  26. does anybody know how to measure and compare the DNS resolving speed of Firefox when IPv6 is enabled and when it is disabled? I want to make sure this is not placebo effect.

    Comment by Anon — December 18, 2008 #

  27. super fast i like it works for me in linux 8.10

    EastAfrica.
    Kenya.

    Comment by titus — December 21, 2008 #

  28. @ All,

    To all of you that have commented letting me know this post works for you, many thanks.

    A comment does a great deal for the confidence of a blogger.

    Comment by techxplorer — December 22, 2008 #

  29. Thank! I’ve stuck with FF3 because it isn’t the memory hog FF2 was, but since speed was still a problem in 3.0.5, I was beginning to consider switching to Seamonkey or Opera, even though FF is by far my preferred browser. Now FF is usable again!

    Comment by Miles — December 23, 2008 #

  30. [...] con Microsoft). Corey, Thoughts by Techxplorer (pensamiento para los exploradores de tecnología). [Liga] [etiquetas: Video, fireforx, flash, [...]

    Pingback by » OLDaily por Stephen Downes, enero 9, 2009 TIC, E/A, PER…: — February 10, 2009 #


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