[cryforfiji]

Now for the details:

This problem is only occurring at my girlfriend's apartment complex. Everywhere else that I've connected is working properly; however, at this particular location it takes at least 50 seconds to two minutes to connect to any webpage. The interesting thing about this is that once I've successfully connected to a website I can browse the rest of the site with relatively good speeds. For example, in visiting this forum, it took about 2 minutes to load forums.macrumors.com, but once it was loaded browsing the different forums were fine.

The other interesting aspect of this is that the internet is working perfectly under XP. On the mac side of things, I've tried both firefox and safari and both are exhibiting the same symptoms. Also, because of lazy network security, I have access to the router setting (huzzah admin/password default settings!), so I can provide any information that could lead to a problem.

Furthermore, I've researched this a bit and it seems like it could be the DNS settings, but I've already tried the opendns.org settings and they didn't help (I placed these DNS addresses under both my ethernet and airport settings).

I'm also currently running 10.5.4

I know the post is long, but I really appreciate anyone that's willing to help or even read this

Thanks!

[mduell]

Despite what you've tried with opendns, it sounds like a DNS issue.

Open up terminal, type nslookup, hit enter, and then type a domain name you've never been to before, hit enter, and see how long it takes to resolve.

[Simon]

Agreed. This definitely sounds like a DNS issue.

Did you try using only the opendns.org IPs? 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220
Make sure you remove all other entries. Make sure you hit apply.

[cryforfiji]

I tried to put the opendns addresses in the router itself but saw no speed increase. I'm really stumped as to what's happening.

Also, the connection at the apartments is DSL. I'm not sure if that changes anything, but it's the only DSL that I connect to at all.

Thanks again for the help

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by cryforfiji 

I tried to put the opendns addresses in the router itself but saw no speed increase. I'm really stumped as to what's happening.

Also, the connection at the apartments is DSL. I'm not sure if that changes anything, but it's the only DSL that I connect to at all.

Thanks again for the help

Putting the OpenDNS addresses in the router is only half the task. You have to point your computer's DNS addresses to the router. That is very important, and it should allow your computer to check the router, which will forward the request to OpenDNS. Give it a try.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by cryforfiji 

I tried to put the opendns addresses in the router itself but saw no speed increase. I'm really stumped as to what's happening.

The DNS setting in OS X is the problem, not in the router. Open up network preferences advanced and see what it says for DNS.

[cryforfiji]

My DNS settings that are grayed out when I go into my airport settings are 208.67.222.222, 208.67.220.220, and 151.164.23.201 (which is the DNS address for the DSL connection).

Again, to further verify that this is a DNS problem, I pinged www.yahoo.com and pinged 206.190.60.37. The IP came back instantly while the name took a good 45 seconds before returning anything.

[Cold Warrior]

Try flushing your DNS cache. In 10.4 and earlier, DNS cache is handled by lookupd. Leopard (10.5) replaces it with dscacheutil. Execute the following in a terminal to clear your DNS cache.

# 10.4 and earlier:
sudo lookupd -flushcache

# Leopard (10.5) and later:
sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

[cryforfiji]

Just tried flushing the cache and I'm not seeing any improvement. I really appreciate the help

[Simon]

Remove the last entry (151.164.23.201) and try using only the OpenDNS addresses. Any better?

[cryforfiji]

I'm not sure how to erase that entry. It's grayed out in my DNS settings so I can't click it to remove it.

[ghporter]

It sounds like you're using DHCP addressing, ("Configure-Using DHCP"), which automatically fills in things like "gateway" and DNS addresses. You should be able to assign a static (fixed) IP address to your computer and use a manual configuration, which will let you manually add a DNS server address.

[cryforfiji]

Correct. I'm at work right now so I'll give it a try when I get over to the apartment tonight. Thanks!

[cryforfiji]

Running into a bit of trouble here. How exactly to I manually change the DNS servers on my mac? Under System Preferences I can manually set my Subnet Mask, IP, and router IP but I can't set which DNS entries I want to include and, more importantly, exclude.

Under the DNS settings tab I can add whatever address I'd like; however, there are still the same 3 DNS entries as before that are grayed out that I cannot delete. Two of these are the openDNS entries that I placed in the router manually and the third is the DNS for the service provider (AT&T DSL if my googling is correct). If I understand correctly, that third address is the most likely culprit here, but I'm not sure of how to remove it.

[Simon]

Originally Posted by cryforfiji 

Under the DNS settings tab I can add whatever address I'd like; however, there are still the same 3 DNS entries as before that are grayed out that I cannot delete. Two of these are the openDNS entries that I placed in the router manually and the third is the DNS for the service provider (AT&T DSL if my googling is correct). If I understand correctly, that third address is the most likely culprit here, but I'm not sure of how to remove it.

http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?...08081309290397

[ghporter]

Interesting, Simon. I didn't know that was possible. I don't have a use for it personally right now, but it should help a lot of others. cryforfiji, I said to change your configuration to "Manual" and you'd be able to enter whatever you wanted. Are you now using a manual configuration and it's still not letting you change the DNS entries? On my iMac with manual configuration I can change anything I want and it sticks...

[cryforfiji]

Simon: I entered that and it's still not allowing me to erase the DNS settings. Granted, I did it pretty late last night and was quite tired, so there's a good chance I made a mistake somewhere. I'll definitely check it again today.

Ghporter: It's set to manual and I'm able to enter everything in, but I can't erase the DNS settings that it's picking up from the router automatically, which is where I'm thinking the problem is. This whole thing is just crazy, haha.

[ghporter]

Have you gone to the Advanced button? You can add or delete any DNS setting there, under the DNS tab...

[cryforfiji]

This (aside from the fact that the DNS addresses are different because I'm at work) is what I see at night. The grayed out entries cannot be deleted.

[cryforfiji]

Well...I'm an idiot. After trying Simon's fix I never restarted my macbook (which it states to do right there in the directions...but like I said, it was late ), and now it's stopped automatically acquiring DNS addresses so I've thrown the opendns addresses in there and everything's working great. I'll be heading over to the apartment after work so I'm hoping this will work.

Thanks!

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

Interesting, Simon. I didn't know that was possible.

Comments on that page say the advice has now been superseded.

[ghporter]

At least cryforfiji got things running, and that's what counts. At least in this thread!

[cryforfiji]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

At least cryforfiji got things running, and that's what counts. At least in this thread!

Not so fast... I'm getting the exact same thing when I manually enter my DNS addresses after using simon's method. Verified by pinging google.com and then the IP, where google.com took me about 50 seconds to receive anything and the IP was immediate. The mystery continues and I really have no leads as to what is causing this, but starting next week I'll be exclusively back at my house (senior year, woo hoo!) so I suppose it'll just remain a mystery unless some googling reveals anything new. I might try and give AT&T a call to see if they've had anyone else mention this, but that's not a call i'm looking forward to.

I really do appreciate the help and am still up for trying whatever else anyone can think of

[ghporter]

OK, so while you didn't get it "fixed" you've made progress. (Work with me on this...) There could be some issues with your girlfriend's service and how they are providing connections. Windows is capable of doing things that aren't quite "standards-compliant", and it's possible that your girlfriend's ISP is catering to that market base.

As far as I can tell, you haven't specified what router you're working with, nor how exactly you are connecting. Maybe that would shed some light on this. Oh, and have you actually rebooted that router? That might be something useful to try; it can't hurt!

[JTh]

Sorry I may not add much to the discussion:

I recall there's a relatively common Linksys router that doesn't work well with Macs until you upgrade the firmware. Google the router model and see if this could be the issue.
I also recall issues with ipv4 (or 6, or ???) from Tiger. I know I had to turn off one or the other, and more than likely I would have done so because my internet speed was slow or not working. I do recall as soon as I turned it off, whatever problem I had was fixed. Sorry I couldn't be more detailed; it was over a year ago, but it might be another path to explore. Good luck.

[cryforfiji]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

OK, so while you didn't get it "fixed" you've made progress. (Work with me on this...) There could be some issues with your girlfriend's service and how they are providing connections. Windows is capable of doing things that aren't quite "standards-compliant", and it's possible that your girlfriend's ISP is catering to that market base.

As far as I can tell, you haven't specified what router you're working with, nor how exactly you are connecting. Maybe that would shed some light on this. Oh, and have you actually rebooted that router? That might be something useful to try; it can't hurt!

The current router is a Linksys WRT54GV4 and i'm not sure of the current firmware (at the office right now). I don't have physical access to the router, the apartment complex has simply left the default user/pass on there, so I've been logging into it. I've thought about running a firmware update but without physical access to the router I'm a little wary of doing so without being able to hard reset it if something goes awry. As far as my connection goes, it's just an unsecured wireless connection. As far as rebooting goes, I've refreshed the router's connection via the web-administration, but that's as far as I've been able to go.

And for JTH, that very well may be it as well. I'll definitely look into it.

Seems like my next step is a firmware update, but I just don't want to be that selfish ass that screws it up for everyone, haha.

[Cold Warrior]

With some Linksys models, I've seen subnet problems: every few minutes the subnet setting will change, forcing the Mac to negotiate a new IP. I'm not sure what drives this, but it's really annoying.

Are you trying to do any BitTorrent while browsing the web? Any BitTorrent at all?