[Andrej]

Recently, my iMac G5 has picked up the dreaded 8-second delay connection bug, in which any unique website or address that I visit requires waiting exactly 8 seconds before "Connecting to " appears in the status bar or progress is made otherwise. This delay occurs for all browsers, the iTunes Music Store, and even iChat. If I visit the site again within roughly 5 minutes, then there is no such delay. This problem has occurred before, but it went away pretty quickly. This one is not going away. It might even have started from running Applejack, but that doesn't make sense, considering that I ran Applejack a few months earlier and did not end up with this problem.

Setup: iMac G5, 10.4.7, 1280MB RAM, dial-up.

I've tried searching this forum and the internet for solutions, but it's ridiculously tough to find anything resembling a relevant solution using terms such as "8 seconds," "8-second delay," and so on. So, I have found nothing. Here is what I have tried:

• Clearing the cache in multiple browsers (despite the fact that the problem is system-wide, not just in one or two browsers)
• Clearing visited sites (again, despite the above fact)
• Restarting the computer
• Shutting down the computer
• PMU reset
• fsck
• Repairing permissions
• Validating preference files
• Cleaning the system cache
• Removing swap files
• Cleaning virtual memory
• Reinstalling the 10.4.7 combo updater
• Enabling PPP echo packets in PPP options for modem connections

None of these have worked. Every time I try to make a connection to a site, there is that 8 second delay, and this even goes for the not-RIAA-approved programs. I mention this, because I'm trying to find a copy of MainMenu (another system-cleaning program), which already is freeware, but some idiots hacked the publisher's site and server before deleting all of the files there.

[ghporter]

Never heard of this issue. But it IS a NETWORKING issue, NOT an OS X issue, so I'm moving it to the Networking Forum.

[Tee]

Could this be slow DNS servers at your ISP?

You could try changing your DNS servers in the Network-System Preferences settings to an alternate DNS like:
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

(Free DNS service run by www.opendns.com, no sign-up required)

Restart for good measure and see if the delay goes away.

[Andrej]

Sweet. How did you know that the DNS servers were the problem?

[Tee]

Originally Posted by Andrej

Sweet. How did you know that the DNS servers were the problem?

A DNS look-up needs to be conducted as pretty much the first step to almost any internet connection. They symptoms you described suggest that the DNS look-up was taking a long time to complete. However, once you had successfully visited a site, subsequent visits did not suffer from the delay because the system caches it's DNS lookups.

While you can continue using the opendns.com servers, technically the ones provided by your ISP should be the fastest in most cases (since they will probably be physically closer to you). You might want to submit a trouble report to your ISP about the slow DNS servers.

[ghporter]

You may also want to run the following two commands in Terminal:

"sudo lookupd -flushcache"

"ipconfig /flushdns"

(without the quotes, of course). These will (obviously) flush your machine's DNS cache, and that should dump any old and possibly corrupt DNS listings from your computer. This gives you a fresh start under the new DNS servers.

[Tomchu]

ipconfig /flushdns

^ That's a good one. ;-) Are your Windows habits creeping up on you? Hehe.

[ghporter]

Oops. It's "ifconfig" and not what I said... And ifconfig doesn't have an option to flush the cache-that's all part of "ipconfig." Copy and past has had its revenge on me! Doh! Yes, things are indeed conspiring against me at the moment... Sorry