[clue-tech] DNS lookups take a looooooong time

[Peter Kuykendall]

katanacb at comcast.net wrote:
> Howdy everyone,
> 
> I recently picked up a new wireless router (netgear WNR854T).  It has gig-e, wireless N, etc ... all the nice stuff that I wanted to upgrade to after my last wireless router (A US Robotics) bit the dust.
> 
> There's only one VERY annoying thing about this router ... DNS lookups take a LOOOONG time.  For example, with the old USR, I could load a page (such as 9news.com) in a few seconds ... with the Netgear, it takes probably upwards of 10 to even resolve the DNS name, and then another 10 by the time the page loads and all the ad lookups are done.  Now, actual data transfer once the DNS lookup resolves is quite fast... it's just the name resolution that takes forever.
> 
> Does anyone have any idea what might be the reason for this?  I have comcast as my ISP if that helps.  Also, I've directly connected some systems to the cable modem and I don't have this problem.  Yes, I get a different IP address when I do this, but I don't have the DNS lookup problems that I have with the router.  I've gone through the netgear's setup and I can't see anything obvious to me ...  also, there are no firmware updates on netgear's site.  The entire home network is Linux-based.
> 
> If anyone has any ideas (or if you have this router, and don't have this problem) I'd be thankful ..
> 
> -Chris
> _______________________________________________

Hi Chris -

I have a similar setup with a different model of Netgear wireless 
router.  I found that 1 had 2 separate DNS problems:

1 - The Netgear won't consistently forward the DNS requests from the LAN 
to the WAN.  In my case it seems to be a bug in the firmware.  It's a 
hassle because I have to manually configure my machines to use a 
different DNS server, since I can't get the router to send anything to 
them except for 192.168.15.1 (its address).

2 - As mentioned in other posts, the Comcast DNS servers are terrible. 
I use 4.2.2.1 with no problems.

Note that for my particular setup I must manually configure the LAN 
clients to use 4.2.2.1.

Good luck with this.