Hello!

I really hope someone else here can help shed some light on this problem I am having.

I have been with my previous VPS provider for 2-3 months. During that period, I have made heavy use of SSH (putty) to dynamically forward a localhost Socks - port 8888.

The CLI command would look something like this:
putty -ssh -P port -2 -pw xxxxx -C -D 8888 root@11.22.33.44

I used it for browsing with Firefox/IE and gaming online with socksified games etc. Always worked pretty good with old provider.

Then I signed up for a Linode360 and have set it up identically.
Currently have no iptables rules (other than forwarding for OpenVPN). Sshd_config has been setup identically to my old one out of desperation.

However, the problem continues to plague me. Once I start using the browser for a while (socks proxied 8888), it will start to slowdown and eventually get stuck loading a page. All this typically happens within the first 3-5mins of browsing.
Now, if I were to go back to the SSH terminal, It would be Frozen too and I would be unable to enter any text or input whatsoever.
The site doesn't even have to be bandwidth intensive!

What puzzles me is that on the old vps, everything worked perfectly... 350KB/s streaming HD youtube videos etc. Over here, it gets stuck trying to just load the video controls.

The SSH tunneled Socks works just fine with games and my OpenVPN 2.1 works great too. But the SSH tunnel is driving me insane!

Note: Sometimes, if one waited long enough, the "frozen" ssh terminal would "unfreeze" and be usable again. Similarly the browser would come "unstuck" and finish loading pages. Other times, the SSH terimnal "dies".

Does anyone know what's wrong and what a possible fix may be?

Zanderion

Had to clarify this point as I was sleepy when I typed it:



I meant to say that sometimes, after a long while, the ssh terminal would accept keystrokes again. But upon more browser data forwarding - would usually freeze up again. So using a browser through the SSH socks proxy is quite impossible.

Problem solved.. use sshd port < 1024.
No idea why but it worked.
Case closed.

That is weird. I use port 8834 and am able to watch YouTube/Hulu/Netflix, browse the web, and chat on IRC.

I wonder if your ISP has some broke-ass throttling in place (attempting to stop p2p piracy?) that you were tripping. By setting the sshd port below 1024 it may be skipping their throttle rules.

_________________
Rgds
Stephen
(Linux user since kernel version 0.11)

This port is a localhost port on trader's computer.

That is a very real possibility. I'm just glad I actually dug around enough or I may have moved on elsewhere and Linode rocks!

If you meant port 8888, yes that was localhost but that wasn't the one I was referring to.

I had set SSHD to use port 1122. And it had those issues. I changed it back below 1024 and it's been working fine since then!

Hello,

I'm experiencing exactly the same problem, with the added enigma of everything working fine for several months until this Friday. Now I'm experiencing ssh freezes with low to none traffic(sub 30k/s ) in putty & openssh both.
I was able to verify with a third party server that the problem presents on the linodes only and changing the port number did not improve the situation in any way.
Does anybody have a suggestion before I open a support ticket?