google compute engine tool gcloud is exceptionally slow

Question

I tried downloading and using the gcloud bash tool to manage my accounts, however everything I do with the tool is exceptionally slow. It will take MINUTES to reply to a command that is typed.

Is there perhaps a firewall I need to open up on my router or something else to get this to work fast like it's supposed to? For example, the "Installing..." lines in this video https://youtu.be/4y4-xn4Vi04?t=1m21s -- you'll notice they are all complete in the tutorial within a few seconds. This takes over 10 minutes to complete on my machine.

I'm on a newer Macbook Air, and all other internet/etc works really fast. I'm on a decent speed internet connection from AT&T Uverse (30mbps/3mbps). All other browsing is fast and just fine, the only thing in the world I have a problem with is this gcloud tool.

Answer 1

I just ran into a similar issue myself, though not as bad as minute long response times. What helped me was turning off the usage reporting.

Looking at some timings:

$ gcloud config set disable_usage_reporting False
$ time gcloud compute -h | tail -1
  real  0m7.058s
  user  0m0.464s
  sys   0m0.088s

A whopping 7 secs to access the help!

Fortunately, this improves greatly after disabling reporting:

$ gcloud config set disable_usage_reporting True
$ time gcloud compute -h | tail -1
  real  0m0.541s
  user  0m0.459s
  sys   0m0.080s

Much better!

Answer 2

I traced this back to packet filters. When I deleted this rule #5 in my AT&T Uverse modem/router (Motorola NVG589), everything works ok. This was a default setting in the modem which caused all sorts of issues.

Answer 3

Mark Shust's answer hinted to me that something might be going on with IPv6. Turning this support off in my router brought the gcloud times back to a couple of seconds from over 2 minutes for a gcloud compute machine-types list.

Note: I've also had to turn off IPv6 support in apt for a similar reason so this is likely a problem with my router or ISP, not the google cloud sdk.