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Unusable DNS, 10.4 Tiger
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Unusable DNS, 10.4 Tiger


  • Subject: Unusable DNS, 10.4 Tiger
  • From: email@hidden
  • Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 17:03:12 -0700

Hi all, I have a rather serious question about an issue that seems to really be destroying the user experience on the Mac. DNS is horribly, horribly broken. Here are a few examples:

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050420025219402
http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-140580.html
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14879923
http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14665754

There are hundreds more links just like this. For whatever reason, any DNS lookup on my computer takes 5-7 seconds. If I try the query again, it takes a fraction of a second, but sometimes reverts to the full time. This happens with any DNS server I try. I have tried disabling IPv6 and using manual addressing instead of DHCP, and this has caused a drastic improvement over where I was, but I still can't get under the 5 to 7 second barrier. Unfortunately if I type "slashdot" in safari, I am looking at 7 seconds to find slashdot.com, another 7 to redirect to slashdot.org, another 7 to find whatever ad is slowing the page down, etc etc. Most pages just timeout. I vaguely remember this happening in 10.3, but with 10.4 my computer is pretty much unusable. I am behind a d-link wireless 54G and actiontec router. My roommate's PC runs normally.

Here are some things I have tried, where 205.171.3.65 is Qwest's DNS server:

########

curl yourwebsite.com -o /dev/null -w "dns: %{time_namelookup} connect: %{time_connect} pretransfer: %{time_pretransfer} starttransfer: %{time_starttransfer} total: %{time_total}\n"

result: (the important part is the last line, dns: 7.854)

% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 143 100 143 0 0 17 0 0:00:08 0:00:08 --:--:-- 0
dns: 7.854 connect: 7.930 pretransfer: 7.930 starttransfer: 8.013 total: 8.208


########

nslookup
server 205.171.3.65
mac.com

result: takes 5 or more seconds to find

########

ping apple.com

result: 5 second delay or timeout, then if I re-run:

PING apple.com (17.254.3.183): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 17.254.3.183: icmp_seq=0 ttl=49 time=76.433 ms
64 bytes from 17.254.3.183: icmp_seq=1 ttl=49 time=75.366 ms

########

ping 205.171.3.65

result: immediate response:

PING 205.171.3.65 (205.171.3.65): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 205.171.3.65: icmp_seq=0 ttl=58 time=46.951 ms
64 bytes from 205.171.3.65: icmp_seq=1 ttl=58 time=46.368 ms

########

The last example shows that Qwest's DNS server is not the problem. I believe the issue is with lookupd or something timing out and then falling back to contacting the DNS server. Some people find relief by running BIND on their machine, which seems absurdly overkill to me. I am hoping that someone on this list is familiar with the internals of OS X and can help me track this problem down, or perhaps I can just override whatever convoluted system is causing this problem, and just contact the DNS servers directly. I will gladly present the solution to the world on my blog.

Thanx for your help,

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Zack Morris              Z Sculpt Entertainment               This Space
email@hidden      http://www.zsculpt.com                 For Rent
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man
  as it is, infinite. -William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

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  • Follow-Ups:
    • Re: Unusable DNS, 10.4 Tiger
      • From: "Peter Sichel" <email@hidden>
References: 
 >Socket problem using linux as server (From: Per Jespersen <email@hidden>)
 >Re: Socket problem using linux as server (From: "Justin C. Walker" <email@hidden>)
 >NKE stacking order (From: "Peter Sichel" <email@hidden>)
 >Re: NKE stacking order (From: Josh Graessley <email@hidden>)

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