Firefox slow on Ubuntu

Hopefully will help others:

Installed the amazing Ubuntu 6.0.6 Dapper Drake distro of Linux on a box, and experienced strange slow speed on Firefox. Would not work on https sites, slow loading or no loading on other sites and pages. Even after updating Firefox to 1.5.0.7

Turns out Ubuntu’s Firefox defaults to the newer IPv6.

How To Fix:
about:config
type 'ipv6'
double-click network.dns.disableIPv6
Restart Firefox


WebBrowsingSlowIPv6IPv4

The Ubuntu development team have enabled the newer Internet protocol, IPv6, by default. However, a lot of older hardware — such as NICs and modems — only supports IPv4. This leaves you wondering why Internet applications take so long to work.

The following instructions disable IPv6 support, allowing users with incompatible hardware to get normal connection speeds and DNS resolving, and by extension faster web browsing.

More details of the IPv6 ‘feature’ here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WebBrowsingSlowIPv6IPv4

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 10th, 2006 at 7:42 am and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.