expatriate wrote:
Please describe "impossibly slow". What application are you running that demonstrates the slowness? Can you quantify a bit more?
Fair enough. "Impossibly slow" means too slow to comfortably use the net. I switched this week from a DSL provider to a cable provider -- Time Warner Roadrunner. The slow DNS was apparent as soons as I began using RoadRunner. This is a simple hardware setup: one PC (2700 Athlon XP) and one cable "modem" (Motorola SB5100). Browsing with Mozilla/Konqueror/Epiphany/Galeon: Lookup of new URLs takes 15-30 seconds; once the lookup is done, pages load fast; Pinging common sites (Yahoo, Mozilla, etc.) shows same symptoms: 15-30 seconds to resolve the name. Anything that doesn't require name resolution, e.g., browsing to an IP address, isn't delayed. I see the same behavior with Slackware. I did a clean install of WinXP -- same machine, same provider, same nameservers -- and see none of this slowness.