How to speed up Kali upgrade and update?

This article is intended to demonstrate, how to fix the slow internet speed while updating and upgrading the Kali Linux. So there are many ways to fix this and I’ll put all of them here in this post; Why so? Because I don’t know which version of Kali you are running on your machine. Usually slow speed on update & upgrade is due to these several issues:

1. Mirrors issue
2. Name Servers issue
3. Repositories issue
4. Unknown issues :-(

So in this post, it’ll try to cover all possible scenarios if I missed some please do report this post by commenting below.

Method 1

-Fixing Name Server’s issue

1. Check if you have the right repositories is your /etc/apt/sources.list
2. Remove unwanted or unsupported repositories.
3. Clean apt-get cache.
4. Choose a fast DNS server.

Step 1: Clean apt-get cache

apt-get clean

Step 2: Edit DNS Name Server

Edit resolv.conf file:

leafpad /etc/resolv.conf

Step 3: Replace with Google DNS Name Server

Following two are Google DNS, let’s face it if Google is broken, we all think the Internet is broken. Hence the reason for using Google DNS. You can choose other DNS Server if you want that is fast and reliable.

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

Save and close the file.

Step 5: Give a shot!

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

If you’re not logged in as root then use

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Method 2

-Change HTTP to repo

Step 1: Edit the sources.

Use the following repositories (update yoursources.list). These are the current repositories of kali.

Kali Repositories

deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free
# For source package access, uncomment the following line
# deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free

Above repositories are the default one but you have to replace these with this:

deb http://repo.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free
# For source package access, uncomment the following line
# deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free

Method 3

-Transport HTTP mirrors to HTTPS mirrors

Step 1: Let’s transport source to https.

Transport source from http to https. Open the terminal and type the following commands.

apt install apt-transport-https

Step 2: Edit resources.

Just change http to https. Or simply just copy these repo to your sources.list

deb https://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free
# For source package access, uncomment the following line
# deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main contrib non-free

That’s it! ;-) Hope this article helps if not then do share your problem I’ll try to figure out some solutions.