Re: Unusable DNS, 10.4 Tiger (Fixed)
Re: Unusable DNS, 10.4 Tiger (Fixed)
- Subject: Re: Unusable DNS, 10.4 Tiger (Fixed)
- From: email@hidden
- Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2006 15:04:28 -0600
For anyone following this thread from a few months ago, I figured out
why my DNS resolving was taking 5-7 seconds. It was the d-link
DI-624 802.11g wireless hub I am using. My DNS servers were set to
their defaults, 0.0.0.0, so I think they were probably timing out and
then forwarding the request to Qwest (no matter what I had my
computer's DNS servers set to). Log in to your hub/switch or router,
then go to WAN settings. For the d-link, click the WAN button on the
left, then the top Home button should be highlighted. Go to "Primary
DNS Address" and "Secondary DNS Address" and enter any 2 of these
addresses, I just used the first two:
4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2
4.2.2.3
4.2.2.4
4.2.2.5
4.2.2.6
These are level 3 DNS servers, but tend to be more consistent than
the ones for Qwest or your ISP. In other words, you can take the
uncertainty of your ISP's DNS servers out of the picture. Your ISP's
servers do have the potential to be a little faster if they are
working though, due to lower load, full control by the ISP, and
better ping time. I only see differences of about 30 milliseconds
(70 ms vs 100 ms for various DNS servers), which is probably
insignificant compared to the time to download a web page, unless the
page has many images from other sites.
Once you set the DNS in your hub, you should be able to use DHCP on
your Mac and leave the DNS servers and Search Domains fields in the
Network system preferences empty (meaning your Mac just falls back to
the hub's DNS that you just set). My friends say that pages load
faster if those fields are not empty, but I just tried leaving them
empty, and browsing is still fast.
If this still doesn't work for you, check to see if you have 2 boxes,
a router and a hub. You may have to disconnect the hub and hook your
computer up directly to the router and make sure it also has correct
DNS settings. I have not yet tried this though.
This link may provide a similar solution, without having to configure
the router (for example if you work in an office and don't have
access to the hub):
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050420025219402
The tradeoff is having to run a DNS server on your mac with BIND,
which I think is much scarier. This method probably works because
BIND would bypass the router and talk to DNS servers directly, but I
have not tried it so I don't even know if it works.
After many days of research and over a year of slow surfing, I really
believe that this issue is a bug in the Mac OS, because my PC friends
are not affected. I think that if someone explicitly sets DNS
servers for their Mac, they should be independent of the hub, and I
don't believe that is happening.
Please, if someone at Apple is reading this, can you forward this to
whoever is working on the Network system preference pane? I think it
would be easy to add a diagnostic tool of some sort, probably just a
message box next to the DNS server fields. It should try to talk to
apple.com or a series of random domain names like apple1.com,
apple2.com. It could also flush the DNS cache each time and try
talking to 1 server, but I fear this wouldn't account for caching
higher up the DNS tree. It could say something like "DNS appears to
be timing out, please check that your router or hub has the correct
DNS servers provided by your ISP". The message should pop up if the
DNS takes longer than say 500 ms, and there should be a checkbox to
dismiss it with something like "I am using satellite internet" which
has a huge ping time anyway. If you can detect the DNS timeout
directly, great, but if not, you could parse the output of curl like
this, and maybe get a fix into the next OS update:
/usr/bin/curl apple.com -o /dev/null -w "dns: %{time_namelookup}
connect: %{time_connect} pretransfer: %{time_pretransfer}
starttransfer: %{time_starttransfer} total: %{time_total}\n"
If it's not working, I get dns of 5.5 seconds, if it is, I get like
100 ms. I think that because most people just hook up their router
and surf, potentially millions of mac users could be dealing with a
lackluster browsing experience. A multi-second delay causes DSL to
feel slower than dialup, and I found myself double clicking links, or
pushing return twice in the URL field, to force a double DNS lookup.
It was psychological draining, and I can't imagine what it's doing to
people's first impression of using the Mac OS.
Sorry for the long letter, I just wanted to be thorough for people
who find this thread in the future.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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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