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On my fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04, while torrenting Kali Linux, my internet speed fluctuates greatly. This happens on all of my devices, leading me to believe my router is dying. Can anyone help? I'm using a wired connection on some devices, and a wireless on others. How is this not linux? Screenshot of problem

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  • Hellreaver: sorry for voting to close: After the words "Kali Linux" my eyes glazed over. Voted to re-open.
    – Fabby
    Jan 15, 2015 at 22:00
  • It's probably NOT your router dying. It's probably either a) using DNS from the router to look up each IP to host and the router is choking (don't use cheap routers for DNS or turn off the lookup feature in your torrent client... or both), b) ISP throttling based on packet inspection (oh, he's torrenting, start dropping traffic), or c) adaptive shaping knocking it down over and over again (high traffic, let's start dropping every Xth packet). If it re-opens I'll post as an answer. In the meantime, at least you can read this.
    – RobotHumans
    Jan 15, 2015 at 22:06
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    That sine-wave speed ticker reads EXACTLY like poorly implemented traffic shaping/TCP-synchronization.
    – RobotHumans
    Jan 15, 2015 at 22:14
  • I don't think your router is dying... This could be a number of things: ISP congestion (somewhere in-between your fastest uploader and you). The number and quality of uploaders (If you have 1 Swede or Russian giving you the 4MByte/s you have and he/she/it watches a youtube video, you get knocked down ...) We need more info and you're using transmission, which doesn't give you a lot of options on digging down into the details)
    – Fabby
    Jan 15, 2015 at 22:15
  • The sine-wave pattern could also mean a buffering problem on one of the intermediate routers... It can be a ton of things. But definitely not your router dying!! :-)
    – Fabby
    Jan 15, 2015 at 22:18

1 Answer 1

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It's probably NOT your router dying. It's probably either

  • using DNS from the router to look up each IP to host and the router is choking
  • (don't use cheap routers for DNS or turn off the lookup feature in your torrent client... or both)
  • ISP throttling based on packet inspection
  • (oh, he's torrenting, start dropping traffic)
  • adaptive shaping knocking it down over and over again
  • (high traffic, let's start dropping every Xth packet).

That sine-wave speed ticker reads EXACTLY like poorly implemented traffic shaping/TCP-synchronization.

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  • Getting a new router and changing the 802.11 to an unused channel actually partially solved the problem. It's not solved, but it's a lot better. My router started to kick people off the WiFi randomly.
    – Hellreaver
    Jan 18, 2015 at 14:13
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    I just moved what I saw from the comments to the answer, just like I said I would. If you're still seeing some of the randomness behavior, maybe your router has more memory now and the DNS thing is still choking, or something else. They're useful bullet points for anyone else that has the same problem. That's what the site is really about. Finding problems that effect large numbers of people and putting up decent bullet lists to help show them what to fix.
    – RobotHumans
    Jan 18, 2015 at 14:16

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