Fast Downloads, Problems Connecting

[ztpkng]

Hey all,

I've been fighting this for a while and don't know what to do.

When I download content, I seem to have a fine connection speed. I can do a speed test and confirm 6-8mbps downloads, and I game frequently without trouble.

My problem is connecting to websites. Frequently, when I try to visit a page, I'll get a page not found error. This is in IE, Firefox, and Chrome, on both wired and wireless connections via both my Vista laptop and (previously XP now W7) desktop. It's not related to any particular website... I'll try to go somewhere and it will tell me the page isn't found. I'll spam reload a few times and eventually it will come up, though some pages are loaded with screwy formatting that make them unreadable. Youtube and life hacker, for example, might load all their text on a plain white background with no images or videos. Hitting reload a few more times will sometimes bring the page up properly. Any guesses? I'm on cable internet on a Netgear Router... WRT??? sorry, not at home right now. I can give the wife a call if you need the exact model.

[YeOldeStonecat]

If you power cycle the router, does performance come back?

[ztpkng]

Originally Posted by YeOldeStonecat

If you power cycle the router, does performance come back?

Yes, for a while. Seems to work whether I cycle the router and modem or just the router... effect lasts for a few minutes or days but always comes back.

[trogers]

Perhaps problem is in your ISP's DNS servers.

Try this test: http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/index.html

[ztpkng]

That's a neat link... hopefully you can make some sense of this. I ran it 7 times and got slightly different results a few times, so I'll give you as much detail as possible... all green results are excluded.

<Noteworthy Events>

Major Abnormalities:

* We received unexpected and possibly dangerous results when looking up important names [Red, 1/7]
* Your DNS resolver returns results even when no such server exists [Red, 7/7]
* Your ISP's DNS server is slow to lookup names [Red, 2/7]

Minor Aberrations

* Certain protocols are blocked in outbound traffic [Yellow, 7/7]
* Network packet buffering may be excessive [Yellow, 7/7]

<Reachability Tests>

General Connectivity:

--Port 53:
* Direct UDP access to remote DNS servers (port 53) is blocked... The network you are using appears to enforce the use of a local DNS resolver. [Red, 1/7]
* UDP access to remote DNS servers (port 53) appears to pass through a firewall or proxy. The applet was unable to transmit an arbitrary request on this UDP port, but was able to transmit a legitimate DNS request, suggesting that a proxy, NAT, or firewall intercepted and blocked the deliberately invalid request. The applet was also able to directly request a small DNS response with EDNS enabled. The applet was also able to directly request a medium sized (~1400B) DNS response. The applet was also able to directly request a large (~1800B) DNS response. [Yellow, 6/7]

--Port 135 (RPC), 139 (NetBIOS), and 445 (SMB) are all blocked, but it says this is probably for security [Yellow, 7/7]


<Network Access Link Properties>
* We estimate your uplink as having [550-700] msec of buffering. This level can in some situations prove somewhat high, and you may experience degraded performance when performing interactive tasks such as web-surfing while simultaneously conducting large uploads. Real-time applications, such as games or audio chat, may also work poorly when conducting large uploads at the same time. [Yellow, 7/7]
* We estimate your downlink as having 1000 msec of buffering. This is quite high, and you may experience substantial disruption to your network performance when performing interactive tasks such as web-surfing while simultaneously conducting large downloads. With such a buffer, real-time applications such as games or audio chat can work quite poorly when conducting large downloads at the same time. [Red, 1/7]

<DNS Tests>

Restricted domain DNS lookup:
* Your ISP's DNS resolver requires 1500 msec to conduct an external lookup, and 2500 msec to lookup an item in the cache. This is particularly slow, and you may see significant performance degradation as a result. [Red, 1/7]
* One or more of the hostnames required for the test could not be resolved. [Red, 1/7]

DNS resolver adress:
* One or more of the hostnames required for the test could not be resolved. [Red, 1/6]

DNS resolver properties:
* Your ISP's DNS resolver requires 1500 msec to conduct an external lookup, and 2500 msec to lookup an item in the cache. This is particularly slow, and you may see significant performance degradation as a result. [Red, 2/7]
* Your DNS resolver is unable to successfully receive a medium sized (~1400 byte) DNS response although it advertises as EDNS-enabled.

On 5, I got these messages:
* Your DNS resolver will accept DNS packets of up to 4096 bytes.
* Your DNS resolver is unable to successfully receive a medium sized (~1400 byte) DNS response although it advertises as EDNS-enabled.
* Your DNS resolver is unable to successfully receive a large (>1500 byte) DNS response although it advertises as EDNS-enabled.

On the other, I got these:
* Your DNS resolver does not use EDNS.

DNS Lookups of popular domains:
* 1 popular name has a significant anomaly. The ownership suggested by the reverse name lookup does not match our understanding of the original name. This could be caused by an error somewhere in the domain information, or it could be that your ISP's DNS Server is acting as a DNS "Man-in-the-Middle". [Red, 1/7]


DNS results wildcard: [Red, 7/7]
Your ISP's DNS server returns IP addresses even for domain names which should not resolve. Instead of an error, the DNS server returns an address of 67.63.55.33, which resolves to mediacomassist.infospace.com. You can inspect the resulting HTML content here.

There are several possible explanations for this behavior. The most likely cause is that the ISP is attempting to to profit from customer's typos by presenting advertisements in response to bad requests, but it could also be due to an error or misconfiguration in the DNS server.

The big problem with this behavior is that it can potentially break any network application which relies on DNS properly returning an error when a name does not exist.

The following lists your DNS server's behavior in more detail.

* www.{random}.com is mapped to 67.63.55.33.
* www.{random}.org is mapped to 67.63.55.33.
* fubar.{random}.com is correctly reported as an error.
* www.yahoo.cmo [sic] is mapped to 67.63.55.33.
* nxdomain.{random}.netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu is correctly reported as an error.

[ztpkng]

Any other ideas? I tried OpenDNS and it hasn't seemed to make much of a difference. Same results as from that test.

By tried OpenDNS, I mean I went to their site and signed up, and put the IP addresses for their DNS servers in my router's DNS info instead of having it acquire a DNS server automatically from the ISP.

[YeOldeStonecat]

When you say "Download content"..what do you mean by that?

Have you updated the firmware on your router recently? I know some older model routers can show poor performance when Vista or Windows 7 is in the mix, exp if IP6 is still enabled.

You mention wireless..is your wireless secured so no freeloaders next door suck your connection dry?