Forge

Forge Ubuntu 16.04 servers are running Apt updates painfully slow in some European and Asian regions.

For example, 1GB servers in the Linode Singapore region take almost one hour to provision and many things
time out completely because Apt seems to be running so slow. This problem did not seem to be present on
Ubuntu 14.04 and does not seem to affect American regions.

Reward: SOLVED!

As a temporary fix you could force IPv4 for apt-get:

apt-get -o Acquire::ForceIPv4=true update
apt-get -o Acquire::ForceIPv4=true upgrade

You could also try uncommenting precedence ::ffff:0:0/96 100 in /etc/gai.conf.

sudo nano /etc/resolv.conf

add google dns, this may solve your slow connection problem.

nameserver 2001:4860:4860::8844
nameserver 2001:4860:4860::8888
nameserver 8.8.8.8

Also check your HD IO. I tracked a similar problem on Azure due to their horrible IO.

This shouldn't be your problem.

I used to have this problem many years ago (EU region), setting the DNS manually usually fixed it.

Oh also setting up a proxy for the apt updates may also help long term if your updating multiple servers continually.

This is a nice place to start https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SquidDebProxy.

Are the network interfaces' Duplex set up correctly? I had an issue where a NIC was running at 10mb/s instead of the 1GB/s it should have been. This was on a VM with Webfusion, and happened on both 12.04 and 14.04.

If they're VM's with bridged networking then I guess you won't see the duplex value with ethtool eth0.

try use local mirrors
disable ipv6 and force use ipv4

throw in trash ubuntu and use windows or osx

This might help u on top of precedence of ipv4 to ipv6
You can mirror to amazon s3 Asian Region

SouthEast Asia (Singapore)

deb http://ap-southeast-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ap-southeast-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ap-southeast-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse
NorthEast Asia (Tokyo)

deb http://ap-northeast-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ap-northeast-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://ap-northeast-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse

Was solved first by @mamorunl thanks!

Western Europe (Dublin, Ireland)

deb http://eu-west-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://eu-west-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://eu-west-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse
Central Europe (Frankfurt, Germany)

deb http://eu-central-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://eu-central-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://eu-central-1.clouds.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-security main restricted universe multiverse

I believe the command I posted fixed the issue but anyway....

disable IPv6 and force working with IPv4

@taylorotwell please tell us whether the gai.conf fixed the issue or the command I posted?