Internet slow down related to the firewall

Les hlhowell at pacbell.net
Fri Aug 10 04:24:55 UTC 2007


Hi, everyone, 
	I had asked some time ago if anyone had any idea what could slow down
internet access, but got no responses.  I therefore thought it must be
my provider, since I have basically a plain vanilla installation and I
haven't done much to the firewall or network, and no one offered
anything.  I then fooled with it for a few weeks, and finally had
enough.  I contacted my provider (At&T via SBC.Yahoo and asked them to
check it out, and got the usual laundry list of "try this's", all of
which I had tried previously.  I did yet another internet search but no
luck.  The symptom was fast response for about two seconds, then it
would slow to about 30k bits.  
	My desparation act was to begin shutting down services.  I started with
some of the pass word services but no joy.  Then looked at the ports in
the firewall, they looked good.  Then I checked the setup for SELinux,
and it was good.  At this point I thought, the most likely culprits are
those things related to the internet.  I checked the card setup and it
was good.  I checked the modem setup and it was good (DSL), and I looked
at other maps and bits and checked messages but could find nothing.
Finally in an act of desparation I turned off the firewall.  Presto,
network speed is better than ever.

	Question....
	How can the firewall cause the speed to be good for 2 or 3 seconds
(1.5Mb) and then fall to 30Kbit?  Anyone?

Regards,
Les H




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