Technocrat

Possible fix for slow internet in Mac OS X 10.5

Kai Howells
Sat Aug 23 15:24:00 -0700 2008
Computers.
manage

I've been experiencing slow internet browsing in Mac OS X 10.5 and after digging a bit further discovered that it appeared to be slow DNS lookups.

It appears that Apple have made some changes to the way DNS lookups are performed in 10.5.3 and 10.5.4 - and some ISPs haven't caught up yet. From what I've been able to work out, in recent versions of 10.5, Apple have changed the behaviour of DNS lookups to request both IPv6 and IPv4 records. They're also requesting SRV records as well as the usual A record and some DNS servers don't respond properly to this request, leading to delays.

The fix for me was to use OpenDNS as the default DNS servers - I put their nameservers into my router so that all machines on my network will automatically use them. This has returned my browsing to normal speeds with no huge delay between clicking on a link and the page starting to load.

For the quick fix, their DNS servers are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

Possible fix for slow internet in Mac OS X 10.5
Michael Smith
Sat Aug 23 16:01:25 -0700 2008
 manage

Hmmm sounds like apple might be engaging in a bit of embrace and extend here.

I wonder what happens if you run named locally on your mac, then use it as your dns server. The named daemon generates a lot of useful trace information in /var/log/messsages so this might be a good way to debug the problem.

Possible fix for slow internet in Mac OS X 10.5
Frank Ch. Eigler
Sat Aug 23 16:09:31 -0700 2008
 manage

Hmmm sounds like apple might be engaging in a bit of embrace and extend here.

Not really; linux glibc has been doing something similar for ages.

Possible fix for slow internet in Mac OS X 10.5
Michael Smith
Sat Aug 23 17:08:10 -0700 2008
 manage

And the GNU userland, but that doesn't make it good.

Possible fix for slow internet in Mac OS X 10.5
squiggleslash
Mon Aug 25 06:02:46 -0700 2008
 manage

What, by obeying standards? When did that become "embrace and extend"?!

The behaviour of ISPs regarding IPv6 is what's at issue here. What amazes me is not just those that have problems ensuring their own servers don't crap out when an IPv6-capable device tries to use them, which is presumably an issue with a failure of omission, but that some ISPs actually go out of their way to break it. One ISP I used, BellSouth, actually blocked the 6to4 gateway. There's no good reason for them to do so, they just did anyway.

Apple's doing the right thing here. They're pulling some muscle to make sure ISPs that are dragging their feet or actually trying to hamper IPv6 will end up punishing their regular customers, who are likely to take their business elsewhere.

I'd like to see Microsoft do the same thing. And I'd like both Microsoft and Apple to have their machines implement 6to4 by default if they're not given IPv6 addresses directly, to up the pressure.

Possible fix for slow internet in Mac OS X 10.5
Michael Smith
Mon Aug 25 15:36:35 -0700 2008
 manage

Apple's doing the right thing here. They're pulling some muscle to make sure ISPs that are dragging their feet or actually trying to hamper IPv6 will end up punishing their regular customers, who are likely to take their business elsewhere.

My internet gateway runs NetBSD 4.0. The IP stack and the name server both have full support for IPv6. Nothing breaks when my ISP's servers refuse to support IPv6, and I don't see why it should.

Possible fix for slow internet in Mac OS X 10.5
squiggleslash
Tue Aug 26 05:23:18 -0700 2008
 manage

This is a false comparison, there are several problems with it:

1. You don't know that your NetBSD boxes will work in the environments where Apple's are having problems.

2. If both you and Apple are doing something IP-legal, then both systems should work without problems, regardless of what the ISP is doing. If the ISP is doing something that causes Apple's IP-legal operations to fail, then the ISP needs its ass kicked. You can't not kick it simply because someone else's legal operations do not fail.

Essentially what you're saying is similar to going to a dissident who's been arrested for writing a piece in a newspaper critical of El Presidente and responding "Well, I criticise El Presidente all the time and I've never been arrested, so our government can't be at fault for arresting you"

Where did you criticise El Presidente? And even if you also actually wrote a piece in the newspaper doing so like the dissident, how does that make it right that he was arrested?

Possible fix for slow internet in Mac OS X 10.5
Daniel Colascione
Tue Aug 26 22:50:54 -0700 2008
 manage

OS X comes with bind. Why not just set up a local caching-only nameserver and use that?

Possible fix for slow internet in Mac OS X 10.5
Kai Howells
Thu Aug 28 06:25:26 -0700 2008
 manage

because it's easier to plug in two DNS servers, for the known-good OpenDNS servers, into my router and magically everything on my home network (three Macs and misc peripheral devices) is fixed. I could probably tweak the resolver configuration in 10.5 to turn off this feature of asking for other records that my ISP doesn't seem to support, but that sounds like too much work :D

 

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