Hello everyone,

I'm pretty new to Linux but managed to fix every problem I encountered thusfar, but this one gives me real a headache.

On my firewall PC I run SuSE Linux 9.3 Pro. It has two networkcards: an onboard ASRock In VT1602 Rhine II and that one is configured at boot up with DHCP via a Sitecom WL-114 router (192.168.123.125). The other one is a Realtek RT8139 and I configured this one with a static IP-adress (192.168.0.1).

Both networkcard are configured and set up with the primary and secondary DNS server from my ISP. Default gateway is 192.168.123.254 (the Sitecom-router address).

The other PC behind my firewall PC is a multi-boot system, with WinXP (you still have to use IE sometimes for online banking here in the Netherlands...) and also SuSE 9.3 Pro. It also is configured and set up with the primary and secondary DNS server from my ISP. Default gateway is 192.168.0.1 (the second network card in my firewall PC).

Internet access was excellent with both machines. With the second PC it didn't matter if I started up in Linux or XP, both worked well.

Yesterday suddenly my internetconnection on my Linux firewall machine was extremely slow. It kept on saying in Firefox: 'looking up google...' If it came through, then it lasted at least 15 seconds. When I'm on Google, then it works well, it searches fast, but when I click on another found link it says again: 'looking up insecure...', takes about another 15 seconds and then suddenly loads quickly. I can then browse insecure.org really fast, but when it's linked to another page... the same story. And sometimes I couldn't even get through at all. So I tried to ping my both DNS servers and found out that the primary server wasn't reacheable. Contacted my ISP: they were working on it, so I guessed that was it. But after returning from work I found that both DNS servers were working again, but my internet connection was still extremely slow...

But now the thing that really startled and still startles me: on my second PC I had to do some Internet banking, so I booted in XP and the Internet connection was just fine...! As fast as a cable connection has to be. So I went to my ISP homepage and tested my internetconnection on my firewall pc. It took me about 5 minutes to get on their homepage and I could do a download test from their site. Did it: 3 MB was downloaded in 5-6 seconds.

So the bottomline is this: when I'm connected I can surf and browse THAT page really fast. Downloads are also ok. But it takes me ages to get there and my second PC has no problems to access the pages as fast as it used to be.

What can be the problem here? If you need additional information, let me know and I'll try to reply as soon as possible!

Thanks,

Jack

We've been having DNS/network problems here in the UK too. The Windows PC is fast going to sites that it's been to before because windows runs a domain name server service that caches the addresses of sites you've been to recently. That's why it isn't slowed down when your ISP is unresponsive, until you want to go to a new site. You can run a DNS on your gateway PC (Google on BIND) but it raises security issues and it's not simple to set up http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_network/

Hi Andrew,

thanks for your reaction. The thing with the caching I already tackled that one and tried it out by flushing the cache. It's correct that XP was a little slower, but still much faster than my Linux machine, and now it is even accessing never before surfed sites really quickly.

But with your story about the DNS problems in the UK, does that mean that the DNS servers are in fact the real problem and I just should sit and wait for when it's fixed?

everything's working fine now... just 1,5 hours later and all your problems are gone! it's a strange binary world...