Tried looking, but no dice, help!

[Senor360]

In the last few days, my web surfing has crawled down to where the web pages won't finish completely loading because it's taking so long. A ping to www.cnn.com came back after 8.432 seconds. Loading a webpage will take from 30secs-1min and, like i said, not load everything on the page. I don't know what's brought this sudden change. I haven't installed anything new, or downloaded anything malicious that i can tell. I can get online and play my WoW fine, download files/music without a problem, it's the surfing that's crawled down to pathetic speeds. Yet, when doing tests on speedtest or dslreports, I'm able to sometimes get close to my FIOS limit of 15/2.

My setup is in my sig, what other info do I need to provide you to see if anybody can help me out?

Many thanks.. pr0n just isn't the same at these speeds!!

 

[aross99]

Any chance you are having DNS issues? Web activity uses alot of DNS lookups. Individual downloads uses only one or two.

Try checking your DNS lookups with terminal (using dig) or Network utility (lookup tab).

Try looking up common web sites (apple.com, cnn.com, etc). You should be getting responses immediately.

Another issue could be MTU issues, or issues that could be fixed by the OS X Broadband Tuner. This was something that was suggested for very very fast internet connections - like FIOS. I think this was folded into Leopard though, and it looks pretty old now.

From your description, I assume you have been on FIOS for a while, and everything has been working fine for some time, and then all of a sudden it has been slow?

Any Apple software updates loaded during that time?

 

[Senor360]

Some info..

Any chance you are having DNS issues? Web activity uses alot of DNS lookups. Individual downloads uses only one or two.

Try checking your DNS lookups with terminal (using dig) or Network utility (lookup tab).

Try looking up common web sites (apple.com, cnn.com, etc). You should be getting responses immediately.

Another issue could be MTU issues, or issues that could be fixed by the OS X Broadband Tuner. This was something that was suggested for very very fast internet connections - like FIOS. I think this was folded into Leopard though, and it looks pretty old now.

From your description, I assume you have been on FIOS for a while, and everything has been working fine for some time, and then all of a sudden it has been slow?

Any Apple software updates loaded during that time?

Yes, I've been with FIOS since they became available sometime last year or before that. I forget. And up until very recently everything was fine. The only thing that I can think about was that I installed the latest 10.5.3 update, but that's about it. Otherwise I'm completely current with all other necessary releases.

I ran terminal, pinging www.apple.com and got the following results:
PING www.apple.com.akadns.net (17.112.152.32): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=0 ttl=238 time=59.524 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=1 ttl=238 time=59.285 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=2 ttl=238 time=59.191 ms
64 bytes from 17.112.152.32: icmp_seq=3 ttl=238 time=59.114 ms

I brought up Network Utility, did a lookup of www.apple.com and it gave me this:
Lookup has started ...

www.apple.com. 771 IN CNAME www.apple.com.akadns.net.

Let me know if there are any other tests I can do. Thx for the help.

 

[alphaod]

Don't do a look up, do a trace; also if you're speeds are funky, call FiOS, they should help you help; I was getting 100KB/s on my 50/20 and I called them to fix it; they were very helpful.

 

[Senor360]

Well..

Looks like I'll have to break down and call FIOS tonight. I've tried the reset pram/nvram trick (Command+Option+P+R keys after rebooting), and the flush dns cache trick (dscacheutil -flushcache from a terminal session). It still runs hella-slow. I'll put up whatever the find tonight as a solution in case this happens to someone else.

 

[Senor360]

Thanks for nothing FIOS..

Well.. I called up FIOS.. let them know what was going on.. that I'm able to play my game fine, download files fine, even do speed tests fine, but that web surfing was just tediously slow. They said it wasn't their fault, they're delivering the speed they promised, and that it must be a problem with my computer.

So, I guess I'll call my local Apple place tonight, and see if they can help me over the phone. I sure as heck don't want to lug my baby around and take it up there if I can help it. Heck, they should be able to fix it via iChat.

 

[nando2323]

Have you tried using another web browser like Firefox to see if the problem maybe is with Safari?

 

[Senor360]

Yeppers..

Have you tried using another web browser like Firefox to see if the problem maybe is with Safari?

The guy had said, 'It sounds like a problem with your computer or software your using to surf the web', and I told him that I'm currently using Safari, but the same thing happens with Firefox. Now I went poking around, probably where I shouldn't, but since I know a thing or two I thought It wouldn't hurt. Under System Preferences > Network. In the DNS tab of it, it has my network name, we'll call it FRIK AND FRAK, seperated by commas in the 'Search' field. In the DNS field it has my routers IP address. I'd read somewhere that some people use google.com or apple.com in that section, but ?????

 

[rworne]

The guy had said, 'It sounds like a problem with your computer or software your using to surf the web', and I told him that I'm currently using Safari, but the same thing happens with Firefox. Now I went poking around, probably where I shouldn't, but since I know a thing or two I thought It wouldn't hurt. Under System Preferences > Network. In the DNS tab of it, it has my network name, we'll call it FRIK AND FRAK, seperated by commas in the 'Search' field. In the DNS field it has my routers IP address. I'd read somewhere that some people use google.com or apple.com in that section, but ?????

You can use your router - your router is just forwarding your requests on to Verizon.

The problem is the DNS settings in the router. Usually there are two or more DNS servers listed. This was the case when I was with Verizon ages back. My current ISP uses Verizon's lines and they also use two DNS servers.

If the first DNS entry is bad, or just slow, it will slow down everything considerably because the request needs to time out before the request is resent using the second address.

You can circumvent the router by specifying the addresses on your Mac. You can also try using other DNS servers that may be available to you, like OpenDNS.

Two DNS server addresses that Verizon uses are: 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2

Try using OpenDNS too, www.opendns.com/start

See if these speed up your browsing.

 

[Senor360]

Thank you..

You can use your router - your router is just forwarding your requests on to Verizon.

The problem is the DNS settings in the router. Usually there are two or more DNS servers listed. This was the case when I was with Verizon ages back. My current ISP uses Verizon's lines and they also use two DNS servers.

If the first DNS entry is bad, or just slow, it will slow down everything considerably because the request needs to time out before the request is resent using the second address.

You can circumvent the router by specifying the addresses on your Mac. You can also try using other DNS servers that may be available to you, like OpenDNS.

Two DNS server addresses that Verizon uses are: 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2

Try using OpenDNS too, www.opendns.com/start

See if these speed up your browsing.

I shall give these a try tonight and let you guys know. I can't recall if I tried putting in my routers address before, but I'll give it and your suggestions a try.

 

[Senor360]

Hooray!!

That did it!! Adding 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 sped up my surfing back to the good old days. Dunno what's going on with my router, as it's address is the first one listed, but don't care. Thanks so much for the help guys!!