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Speed internet browsing via a local domain name server
Authored by: regulus on Apr 25, '06 09:17:07AM

Wow, drastic improvement is right! Thanks so much, it worked perfectly. I'm not sure what others are talking about saying this won't make a difference. It sure does! Commenters are saying you won't see much difference the first time you visit a website, but that's when I see the biggest improvement. I did a few tests using 2 Macs side-by-side, one with this fix and one without, and was getting almost a 40% speed improvement in page loading time on the first visit to websites. That's huge.



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You Hub is the Culprit
Authored by: zmorris on Apr 29, '06 12:52:16PM

I was able to fix my DNS problem by going into my D-Link DI-624 802.11g wireless hub. Its DNS was set to 0.0.0.0, I entered the first two DNS from this list, these are level 3 DNS servers which will remove the uncertainty of your ISP's DNS being the problem:

4.2.2.1
4.2.2.2
4.2.2.3
4.2.2.4
4.2.2.5
4.2.2.6

For some reason my Macs were falling back to the DNS of the hub, even when I entered different numbers in the Mac. I believe the hub might be hijacking the lookups. I have written a full report in this thread on the macnetworkprog mailing list:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/macnetworkprog/2006/Apr/msg00085.html

Here is the start of the thread, with suggestions from others:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/macnetworkprog/2005/Nov/msg00073.html

A few more details: my hub is connected to an Actiontec GT701-WG wireless router that I have not needed to set DNS entries for. That possibly points to the d-link as the culprit. Qwest is my ISP here in Boise ID, and I have 1500/750 DSL. I see the problem even when booting in safe mode. I was getting this problem in 10.4.6 on my flat panel iMac G4 700 and I also saw this problem in 10.3.9 on my white iBook G3 700.

I have filed a bug report with Apple, ID 4531762, please reference that if you decide to file bug reports of your own. This will hopefully press Apple to include a diagnostic tool in the Network system pref pane to detect DNS timeouts, or fix the bug if it is their fault.

I believe that using BIND may work around the problem, because BIND may be able to access other DNS servers independently of the hub. So BIND might still be a possibility if you are in an office and don't have access to the hub. I have not tried using it though.



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