Linux on Laptop slow internet (DNS)

I have a Dell INSPIRON 5150 laptop. I don't remember the specs all that well at the moment. I'm just waking up. I *think* its 3.06ghz P4 with 512mb ram. 32mb of the mem are shared with the nvidia video card. 60gig hd.

Any time I run Linux on it, it seems like DNS resolution and webpage loads are slow.

I've run both SuSE and Fedora Core on it.

I have set the machine with static ip addresses and the primary and secondary DNS is pointed directly at my ISP's nameservers. The third is pointed at my router which has two other separate DNS servers defined.

Anyay the Fasterfox Plugin for firefox indicates that it takes about 10 seconds to perform the DNS lookup and then the pages is loaded faster than I can blink.

I do have a firewall running on the box, but I don't think that matters. When I disable it, I get the same results.

If I change the DNS order, I get the same results.

On Windows, Firefox takes 1.51s to load news.google.com and on Linux (laptop) it takes 11.6. 10 whole seconds for DNS lookup! It's starting to drive me crazy. In some cases, it's 20+ seconds just to resolve. Even if I try to ping some address, it takes just as long to resolve.

On the same laptop, I have it dual booted with XP Pro. I have vmware installed on it. If I run linux in vmware, it loads just as fast as windows. For whatever reason, booting directly to linux is where I have the problem.

I've never had this problem with linux on my desktops. Any idea what it could be?
I'm not using wireless at the moment. It happens over both cat5 or 802.11g.

Have you turned off IPv6. You can also switch off this in your browser it might help. What browser are you using? If its mozilla Firefox type in 'about:config' in the address bar Scroll down to "network.dns.disableIPv6", it's defaulted to a value of false Double-click on that line and change it to "true" Close relaunch your browser.

That helped. Now, its resolving and loading 5 seconds. It still seems like it's taking too long...

I'm working on it remotely at the moment over NX Free so maybe there is a bit of lag because of that? This is the first time I've used NX Free. I normally setup VNC tunneled over ssh... but NX Free does that automagically and it seems to work better/faster at first glance.

I disabled it system wide via modprobe, disabled it in KDE and also disabled it in FF.

Quote:

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echo "alias net-pf-10 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf
echo "alias ipv6 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

---

Yast>system>/etc/sysconfig Editor>desktop>KDE_USE_IPV6 --> disabled

Well thats what i had in mind, for the other delay i am not quite sure where is it coming from. After i disabled IPv6 on my system things started happening a lot faster.

I've installed SuSE on antoher system. This one has similar specs...

1.9ghz p4 with 512mb rdram 2x40gig hds (run on separate ide controllers)

This install is a server isntall with practically nothing on it. Just mysql, php, apache2, sshd and kde.

DNS resolution is HORRIBLE. It can take in between 10-20seconds to resolve an address!

The server is pointed to my ISPs DNS servers and no other machines except for the SuSE boxes have slow resolution.

I've disabled ipv6 as was suggested above. however, the dns resolution problem is from cli or from a browser. (have kde installed using firefox). I'm booting init3 and only going into X when I *need* it. Which isn't very often. Just when I'm looking for something specific on the web and need a browser.

I've read elsewhere to disable ipv6 in modprobe.conf.local vs modprobe.conf because suse updates can overwrite the modprobe.conf and the modprobe.conf.local will be loaded last overriding anything in modprobe.conf if that should happen.

What else could it be?

Can you configure your resolver to prioritise IPv4 over IPv6 also disable IPv6 - there are plenty of arguments for/against. What browser do you use at the moment? These are just of the top of my head.

EDIT: Just reread your post you are using Firefox have you disabled IPv6 in Firefox?
Also type this:

echo "alias net-pf-10 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf
echo "alias ipv6 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

Also try this and see if it helps
Suse -> Control Centre -> Network Devices -> Select your network card
-> Edit -> Hostname and Name Server.
On the host name screen remove the cross from the box titled
'Update Name Servers and Search list via DHCP'
You can now enter the ip addresses of your name servers in the
nameserver list on this screen.
In search Domain 1 enter the Domain name from the top of the screen
usually by default this is 'site'

EDIT: Can you post the output of cat /etc/resolv.conf

Quote:

---

nonroot@susesrv:~> cat /etc/resolv.conf
domain site
nameserver 68.87.75.1
nameserver 68.87.64.146
nameserver 192.168.1.1

---

The domain site entry is default. This is not part of a domain or workgroup. (should this be changed anyway?)
The first two name servers is comcast dns servers.
The third name server is my router which gets it ip addresses and DNS via DHCP.
(This is a failover should comcast change their DNS addresses again without warning...)

The DNS servers are statically assigned and so is the network card.
Nothing *should* be assigned via DHCP.

I have disabled ipv6 via the

Quote:

---

echo "alias net-pf-10 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf
echo "alias ipv6 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

---

AND Also

Quote:

---

echo "alias net-pf-10 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf.local
echo "alias ipv6 off" >> /etc/modprobe.conf.local

---

I have disabled ipv6 in firefox.

Quote:

---

network.dns.disableIPv6 user set boolean true

---

I've set firefox to directly connect to the internet instead of system setting.

I have also tweaked a couple of other "performance" features in firefox as recommended on various other forums. None of them seemed to help at all. They were all browser related and I beleive this to be a network issue rather than browser issue.

When I ping from CLI, it takes just as long.

If I put a static entry into my hosts file, it resolves right away.

Then go into YaST and edit your NIC. Manually enter your nameservers. De-select the option that updates nameservers automatically via dhcp. Then check dhcp clietn options in YaST and tick Request Broadcast response try putting in 127.0.0.1 into DHCP Client Identifier. Can you also check under ifconfig if your network card has any errors reported. This is all i can think of.... hope it helps


EDIT: I always change domain site in resolv.conf. I just use DNS ip's. Or i just put search and then domain.