Mint 20.2 - Slow Ethernet speeds...

[Landon]

Linux Mint (MATE) 20.2.

System: Kernel: 5.4.0-149-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 9.4.0 Desktop: MATE 1.24.0
wm: marco dm: LightDM Distro: Linux Mint 20.2 Uma base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal

I have satellite Internet which is inherently slow especially so when I'm streaming videos, some platforms are better than others but www.abc.com seems to be the worst...

Their shows are bandwidth intensive and there is no way to throttle the quality down on their page like YouTube will allow you to do to help improve the watch-ability, usually what happens is that the video freezes but the audio keeps going but then several seconds later the audio quits and I get the wheel of death, meanwhile in "System Monitor" nothing is happening in "Network History" it just sits there with no data coming in, after some random amount of time data starts coming in and the video resumes...

But then anywhere from 1 to 5 seconds later the video freezes again and it starts all over, the best that I have seen "Network History" do is about 250kB (yes 250kB), I have a 1Gigabit port and am using a CAT6 cable, I have tried another CAT6 cable and bypassed my Gigabit network switch and am going straight to my Internet router (which also has Gigabit ports)...

This is straight from one Ethernet port to another there are no USB adapters of any kind, this is not over WiFi, and my ISP has said that it is not their problem.

Regarding bypassing the Gigabit network switch... I saw another posting here in the forums that someone figured out that his network switch didn't mind his Windows PC but it hated his Linux PC and would severally throttle the speed down, so this is one of the reasons that I bypassed it.

Here is "ifconfig"...

landon@landon-System-Product-Name:~$ ifconfig
enp7s1: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.42.8 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.42.255
inet6 fe80::a124466b:e91c prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
inet6 2001:5b0:49cf:ec485d18:80e:403a prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x0<global>

ether bc:ae:c5:62:da:08 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 20297142 bytes 20754996797 (20.7 GB)
RX errors 0 dropped 9 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 10660042 bytes 1493782709 (1.4 GB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>
loop txqueuelen 1000 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 368028 bytes 37485110 (37.4 MB)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 368028 bytes 37485110 (37.4 MB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0

Here is "Network" from "System Reports"...

Network: Device-1: Realtek RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet vendor: ASUSTeK driver: r8169
v: kernel port: e800 bus ID: 07:01.0 chip ID: 10ec:8167
IF: enp7s1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>

If you want any other data dumps please let me know and post the command that you want me to run.

Any suggestions on getting this to speed up would be appreciated.

[Landon]

Since originally posting this I've just left System Monitor open and "Network History" has sometimes run at 3.1 megs, a few times spiked clear up to 18 megs, but is currently running at 250k again, the limit of my Satellite connection is 25 megs but I'm constantly getting the wheel of death, so why isn't this thing going faster?

[MiZoG]

Hey Landon.
Don't lose any sleep over switches, ports and cables at least not before you try what in my view is the obvious thing to try first.

Yeah I had worse ethernet performance on Linux than on Windows last time I checked (but not worse WiFi!) but when it comes to streaming it matters not.

Back to your case: You said it yourself you have a satellite connection, that means a latency problem, and some streaming services are worse than others.
Going into lengths in order to squeeze in marginally bigger chunks of packets over ethernet on Linux would make sense only if other devices and/or other OSes fare better in the very same local network of yours.

Stand with your cellular next to your router (so you rule out interference of any kind) and stream abc! Is it better or not?
If not, don't waste energy on micromanaging your lan connection on Linux.