Slow DNS lookup on wireless, resolved -- but questions remain.

Question

Level 1

4 points

Slow DNS lookup on wireless, resolved -- but questions remain.

Hi.

I just bought a Macbook Pro 1.83GHz which arrived today. I love it.

While it instantly connected to my wireless network (I have a Linksys WAP54G) -- I immediately noticed when attempting to visit web sites that the DNS look up was excessively slow. It would take anywhere between 6-11 seconds to load a page. I've been fiddling with the issue all day, scouring these forums and others and nothing seemed to resolve this issue.

For the **** of it, I did an ipconfig /all on my PC to find out what the DNS servers were. I entered one of them directly into the network settings on my MBP, and whala, slow DNS look up resolved.

While that's great and all, it's not an acceptable permanent solution. I bought this notebook so I could work while I travel and entering a DNS address everytime I use a different wireless network *****. (Not to mention it is many times impossible to find out).

Anyone know why this may be happening? How can I /really/ resolve this without entering in the DNS server?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

macbook pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on May 4, 2006 1:18 PM

Reply

Answer 1

vansas

Level 1

0 points

May 5, 2006 8:45 AM in response to jhaff

I've been having problems similar to yours. I manually entered the DNS info a few weeks ago, but I still have intermittent network slowdowns. I notice it with any network activity...email, web browser, etc...just out of curiosity, I pinged a server I knew was available (by IP Address), and notice, sure enough, ping times were showing inconsitiencies as well...so, it seems to me that there is a problem with the wireless network adapter itself, no?

Also of note, my problems aren't limited to one network - they happen regardless of what network I'm connected to.

Anyone else having similar problems?

j

MacBook Pro 2.0 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Reply

Answer 2

Zaftig

Level 1

5 points

May 5, 2006 9:23 AM in response to vansas

I have the same problem. First day my mb arrived, it blazed on the wireless, and now it's crawling on the dns lookup (DL-524)

Reply

Answer 3

jhaff Author

Level 1

4 points

May 8, 2006 4:13 PM in response to Zaftig

I should comment that my problem does /not/ involve slow wireless connection. It only involves extremely slow DNS look-up unless I specify the DNS server in the network settings. I shouldn't have to do that.

Any advice anyone?

Reply

Answer 4

May 8, 2006 9:59 PM in response to jhaff

While I have no idea if this has anything to do with your problem, one thing I always do is disable IPv6. It seems to be useless in the real world and has been implicated in slowdowns in the past.

System Preferences->Network->Airport->TCP/IP, click on the Configure IPv6... button. Set it to Off.

Reply

Answer 5

May 30, 2006 6:41 PM in response to jhaff

Having same problems here with new 2gig macbook, and qwest (actiontek) DSL router w/ wireless

Reply

Answer 6

May 30, 2006 10:17 PM in response to jhaff

Okay, so it occurred to me that I could run an OS-to-OS comparison, since I have bootcamp installed on my macbook.

My XP install is as new as the X install, neither could have a DNS cache of more than a half-dozen websites yet. (I just formatted and installed both OS's yesterday)

I thought of a good number of completely random websites I'd never been to on ANY computer, and typed their URLs in by hand. Without exception, WinXP instantaneously started pulling data from new websites. I even used Safari/Camino/Firefox in OS X, and Firefox in XP.

Equally without exception, OS X choked noticably (2+ seconds at least, 5+ seconds usually) when pulling data from new websites.

That means this is a mac software problem and not a hardware or networking problem! Come on, Apple!! You're going to be shown up by Microsoft on your OWN hardware!?? Get a patch out to us, quick!

Reply

Answer 7

May 30, 2006 10:53 PM in response to jhaff

if your DNS servers are public you would not have to change everytime.

Reply

Answer 8

Jun 5, 2006 12:42 PM in response to jhaff

I have a brand new 2Ghz MacBook Pro that is showing a 5-10 second delay resolving DNS on my home wireless network - D-Link **-614+ router w firmware 2.33

For testing, I connected to my neighbor's wireless (router unknown) and this showed NO DNS slowdown, so I assume this is a problem between my router and the new MacBook.

Our two Powerbooks (Pismo and 12" G4) all use the D-Link wireless network without any problems.

I manually entered DNS servers into my TCP/IP network settings and nothing changed - still slow. I configured manually and gave myself a static IP, and nothing changed.

Hello Apple... are you listening?

Reply

Answer 9

Jun 5, 2006 3:55 PM in response to jhaff

I strongly recommend turning on bind on your system. In the default configuration it will send a DNS query every time. You can run bind as a caching server. Then bind will look up hosts the first time, and remember the results for a day or so. See the following for instructions

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=2367107#2367107

G4 MDD dual 1 GHz, Macbook Pro 2 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Reply

Answer 10

Jun 6, 2006 6:47 PM in response to Jim Bailey

I don't believe this issue is confined to DNS. For me, SSH traffic via host IPs on my local LAN was also being significantly slowed. Once I disabled IPv6 on the Airport device as you suggested all was well again.

Unfortunately I cannot cite a particular event that would coincide with the appearance of this problem.

Reply

Answer 11

Jun 7, 2006 8:42 AM in response to Charles Hedrick1

Bind is just a workaround though, and I'd still get a long pause each day the first time I visit a site, or whenever I go somewhere I haven't been before.

Why is this happening in the first place??? I keep seeing references to this problem with early MacBooks, but I can't find anyone who has found the root of the problem, or how to solve it.

BTW, they delays seem to be getting worse - sometimes 20-30 seconds, and often timing out for email.

* Having a heck of a time trying to post this message &^$%^%$$

Reply

Answer 12

istanbul

Level 1

0 points

Jun 7, 2006 2:16 PM in response to pixelguru

Go to System preferences .... Network There under TCP/IP in the DNS section write 4.2.2.2 or 4.2.2.1 You sholuld get an enhanced speed. Forget about adding the DNS numbers you get for ipconfig etc.etc.

Reply

Answer 13

Jun 10, 2006 7:05 PM in response to pixelguru

Without being at your location I can't tell what is going on. But one possibility is that the DNS server you get through DHCP is slow. If you run bind, depending upon the configuration, you may end up talking directly to the main server, rather than whatever DNS server your ISP supplies. If your ISP's server is slow this could be a fix.

If you don't use a caching server (i.e. without running bind), DNS is pretty simple. If it's slow, either there's a slowness in the network between your machine and the DNS server, or the DNS server is slow.

Reply

Answer 14

iVmichael

Level 6

13,746 points

Jun 14, 2006 6:59 AM in response to Jim Bailey

System Preferences->Network->Airport->TCP/IP, click
on the Configure IPv6... button. Set it to Off.

Oh WOW ! that made a huge difference here (wireless coffee shop in Las Vegas) it's almost instant now - great suggestion thank you 🙂

Reply

Answer 15

jeansnow

Level 1

0 points

Jun 14, 2006 5:58 PM in response to jhaff

Is Apple doing something about this? I mean, it's getting ridiculous now, and I often have 2-3 times before I can get a page to load, and is making reading my feeds in Bloglines a huge pain. I'm thinking it's related to the last OS X update, since when I got my MBP (about 5-6 weeks ago), I was blown away by how fast everything was loading, and then in the past few weeks (I think following the latest update) it's just become incredibly frustrating. I tried some of the suggestions mentioned here (putting in 4.2.2.1/2, or turning IP6 off), and nothing has made a change. Heeeelp!

Reply