[vox] Internet dying?

[George Georgalis]

On Sat 16 Oct 2010 at 06:51:39 PM -0700, Richard Harke wrote:
>Normally my internet access is fairly good but recently I have had a lot of
>episodes of really bad response.
>My connection is DSL through earthlink. when one of hese episodes happens,
>it usually seems to be
>the DNS lookup that hangs. I find this puzzlling as frequently the message
>in the little window at the bottom
>of the browser is looking up the site I am already at. I thought the browser
>cached the sites it was on. But worse,
>sometimes it ends up on the no such luck message from the DNS server. This
>was earthlink at first but I
>changed my config so that now it is openDNS. When this happens it doesn't
>seem to matter what site
>I'm trying to reach. Sometimes I go ahead and open addiional tabs and try to
>reach several sites.
>Then they all hang for a while then all the pages come up at about the same
>time.
>
>Are other people having this kind of issue? I have thought it my be my ISP
>but the fact that I get
>failure messages from openDNS seems to say this is a more general problem.


I wouldn't be so quick to excuse your ISP, perhaps it's your
connection, not their nameservers. Does the mtr program (try it if
you don't know it) show good connectivity to 8.8.8.8 or 8.8.4.4
(the google public recursive name servers)?

I would focus on using dns query tools for determining dns
availability.  Your browser will say looking up dns after it gets
records and queries the webserver. Been that way always, I don't
know why.

I prefer djb dns tools. But you probably don't have them installed.
You probably do have dig installed, to test a dns server, try:

dig @8.8.4.4 google.com

I get best dns performance from a local cache but not everybody
does.  Try http://code.google.com/p/namebench/ to see what works
best for you.

Also, you could have local issues.... for example make sure all
florescent lights near your wires are off, and test with a wired
connection vs wifi.

Good luck!

-George