Extreme slowness on linode.com home
The issue has been going on for a long time now, but I've chosen to go with linode anyway because this particular issue seems to be specific to my home internet connection somehow. Anyway, the issue is this - linode.com takes an incredibly long time to load. It isn't 100% of the time, but I'd say about 90-95% of requests take a huge amount of time. Sometimes as long as two minutes per page hit. This causes me problems in trying to do any configuration changes.
There's more to the issue, though. Most places I ssh into have a similar delay. When I looked into it a while ago, I found that it appeared to be an issue with not being able to look up my home IP address. While I cannot test this theory out on linode.com's homepage (not even sure why the homepage would be trying to lookup my IP), I can test it on my linode. By adding my IP into /etc/hosts, the ssh delay drops to around 5 seconds instead of 30-120.
I don't know exactly what this means. I'm terrible when it comes to understanding fully how networking works. So I can't really understand what's going on, much less how to get around the problem. What I've tried so far is connecting to a different network card (my computer has two) and connecting directly to the cable modem (charter communications if that makes any difference) instead of going through the router. Neither of those made any difference, so I can almost rule out anything local to my computer….
EXCEPT that at work I can hit linode instantly. When I ssh into another machine from home, I can run lynx to hit linode.com instantly. I have verified that lynx at home is also slow, so it isn't my browser (I already knew this from the ssh testing, but when one is confused one begins trying illogical things to narrow down the problem). I have also tried my wife's computer, and it too is amazingly slow on linode.com.
So it's specific to us somehow, but not in any way I know how to deal with. Is there something in the cable modem itself that is possibly preventing reverse lookups of our IP address? It's a Motorola SB5101. If somebody knows how to hack the thing into being a little more helpful, or any kind of workaround that could get this reverse lookup situation dealt with, I'd be very grateful.
6 Replies
It probably wouldnt be specific to your cable modem or network card, reverse mapping would occur on their end, so your probably better off getting intouch with them, and tell them of your problems and what youve done to test it.
Expect them to fob you off at first, as you go through first level support who probably wont have a clue about half the things youve mentioned to us, but probably best to be persistant.
Hope this helps somewhat
I'm on Charter in Birmingham, AL and - other than a few
total outages - have experienced good service in the
last few months.
I did have a LOT - lot lot lot - of Charter DNS slowness,
but I installed a local DNS cache and now no problemo.
If there is any Charter DNS slowness now my local cache
is masking it.
Perhaps this is done to reduce Charter's bandwidth usage?
I don't know, but it did get so bad I tried a DNS cache…
Now Charter appears to run at light speed.
James
Oh well, I guess the good news is it isn't something stupid I did on my end.
If it then works better, issue is with Charter's DNS server you're using.
If you want, private message me with your PC's IP and I could do a 'dig -x
Also, you have other options. Such as rearranging the order of your DNS nameservers on your PC to see if perhaps your current primary nameserver was flaky or slow by making some other nameserver in the list primary.
DD-WRT