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So I am a brand new Ubuntu user, and just getting the feel of the OS.

Tried it on a friends computer, and really liked the system. Have just done a full install of 14.04 on an Asus UX32A (originally running Windows 8).

However, this system has given me the painful problem of Firefox becoming unbearably slow.

Quite often, my tabs show "connecting" for an eternity, either before loading or not loading at all. Sometimes pages only partially load, and youtube videos often get stuck halfway through.

I am connected to my home wifi. I have disabled ipv6 in both Firefox (through about:preferences) and the OS (through the terminal - both from "nano /etc/sysctl.conf" and grub). Firefox is no longer connected through a proxy, and disabling/enabling addons has had no effect.

After disabling the ipv6 it seemed that the problem was solved, but after a few uses it has returned. When the problem is not there, the system runs beautifully. No other device connected on the same home network has this problem (Windows 7, 8, iOS, iPhone, etc). When the problem exists my internet becomes all but unusable, so this is obviously a major inconvenience for me.

I have searched through askubuntu and tried many different solutions, but to no avail. I am giving up and asking my own question. Any help would be massively appreciated!

Note: I noticed that when my laptop is plugged in and above 20% battery, I don't seem to have the problem. This could be a complete coincidence, and I haven't taken the time to observe it. I don't think they should be related, but I'm sure someone out there knows better than me.

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  • Since you mention a difference between being plugged in or not, it could be a problem with the power management of your Wi-Fi. Please have a look at this page about the Asus Zenbook Prime under Ubuntu and see if "Alternative 2" helps (although it is for Ubuntu 13.04).
    – Dubu
    Aug 20, 2014 at 14:33
  • Can you please give us some debug info? You can generate some useful info with the following command (as root): strace -o firefox_strace.txt firefox. Then paste the output from the firefox_strace.txt on a pastbin and edit the link in to your question please.
    – radriaanse
    Jun 24, 2015 at 13:32
  • Have just returned to AskUbuntu after a long time, thanks for the advice! The problem ended up being related to power management rather than Firefox, and I had to use terminal to turn off the power saving feature. The command I used was sudo iwconfig wlan0 power off . However, I had to repeat this command for every new computing session, as I was not familiar enough with the OS to start editing config files. Eventually one of the updates automatically solved the problem! Apr 9, 2016 at 12:52

2 Answers 2

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Have you tried to reset your Firefox ???

If not, you have to go to Firefox --> Troubleshooting Information --> Reset Firefox...

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  • I have, made no difference, the problem doesn't seem to be only with firefox though as I've now tried Chromium as well, with the same results... Aug 18, 2014 at 16:26
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do an

ifconfig eth0

and see if IPv6 is active again.

After using sysctl to disable ipv6... if you reboot you may need to rerun the command again? If you didn't setup a boot script to do it you might find that ipv6 was re-enabled.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WebBrowsingSlowIPv6IPv4

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