comp.os.linux.networking

I guess I should clarify. The current router is running debian sarge.
About six months to a year and a half out of date. I used it a lot in
2006, but have gotten better machines since then. I set it up to replace
the old router in case of an unresolvable issue. Which is what it's
currently doing.

This replaced an older box with mobo battery issues and various other
upgrade issues. It originated from debian woody. As well as a video card
that likes to zap monitors out of commission. But it made a good router.
I've since replaced the battery and installed Debian Etch on it. But I've
yet to get the modem working on it. Every thing else on it is up to
baring a 2.6.24.x kernel that has the SA_INTERRUPT stuff replaced with
IRQF_Shared (+/- off the top of my head). Although not an issue in this
case as it's currently offline and not used.

Beyond that my laptop the one trying to play the game is on Debian Etch
and up to date for the most part. A new video driver out now, and
kernel 2.6.24.2 is no longer the most recent. The other game playing
desktop is running Knoppix 2007.0. With the most recent java from sun.
And various other boxes, but we'll leave them out of it for now.

I like dialing out to my ISP at an MTU of 576. This gives me the most
throughput and the best queueing of packets. At 576 I can download about
15MB per hour and things are more responsive. At 1500 I can download
about 12MB per hour. And pages with a lot of little pictures, ads, and
other things take upward of five minutes just to do the initial render
(mail.yahoo.com). I prefer to run at 576 given a choice.

In the past I worked around this same issue by changing my internal
network from 576 to 1500. Ethernet and wireless. And changed it back a
month later when it no longer seemed to be an issue with pogo. Now here's
the catch, since the current router is my old desktop, it has X and java
and all that jazz. Pogo works fine on it at 576. So there's probably some
greater issue with pppd versioning and NAT with iptables. Kernel 2.6.21 on
that box.

For this time around I not only had to adjust the internal network to
1500, but I had to connect to my ISP at that same packet size. AND I had
to up the mru, or at least explicitly state a value for it, where
previously it was just a commented line of configuration. I imagine that
I could set everything back to how it used to be in six weeks and all will
be fine again. With that one site and java applets.

I've also had packet size issues with other sites (tracfone.com). Where
that website wouldn't load at all until I changed my packet sizes. But I
think it too worked at one point six months later with the older
configuration. Now it may not be a packet size issue at all. All I know
is that making a change in the packet sizes seems to get things working
again. Normally I just touch the MTU (which is rough enough for windows).
But this time some effort on the MRU was needed. Now it may have been
something else, I did change a few things. But it seemed to start working
immediately after touching the MRU. I hope this clarifies it a bit.