network connection 'pauses'?
 

I'm having a difficult time finding a solution for this one and Google searches aren't much help. I'm running Debian Wheezy (3.0.0.1 kernel) and my internet connection seems to "pause" when it starts a new connection. Here are several examples:

I click a link in a web browser and nothing happens for 10-20 seconds... then the connection starts and the page loads normally.

I click "send/receive" in Icedove (email) and the connection status shows that it is waiting for the first mail server... after 10-20 seconds the program connects and then proceeds to download email and connect to and downloads from all other account mail servers normally and quickly.

In the terminal, I run "apt-get update" - the terminal echoes that it is looking for ftp.us.debain.org but doesn't respond for 10-20 seconds - when it starts responding, it connects to the server and also connects normally to all of the other servers in my sources.list.

It seems that the first time a connection is requested there is the pause - then any connection that immediately follows is made normally. But then the next new connection pauses again.

This computer is dual boot - Linux and Windows 7. Windows does not have this connection problem. And I don't remember this being an issue with the previous 2.6 kernel. And none of the other computers on my home network exhibit this issue.

What do you network experts think?

Well, I discovered the solution to my problem, and since it's always very frustrating to be searching for a solution only to find posts that briefly state "I solved my problem" without including the solution, here's the solution to my issue.

I had first set up wheezy (2.6.x kernel) months ago and was using ATT DSL at the time, and I had also been using custom DNS servers with my DSL (set in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf). More recently I moved to cable internet, upgraded to the 3.0.0.1 kernel and did a dist-upgrade, which is when I noticed the network "pausing". Now somewhere in my upgrading process dhcp3 had been installed so when I was looking at my "pausing" problem I discovered that my resolv.conf had custom DNS servers and I naturally checked /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf. When I saw that there were no DNS servers listed I was stumped, until I looked at the dhclient.conf in /etc/dhcp/. The custom servers were still listed there and removing them solved my problem.

I had assumed that since dhcp3 was installed that the dhclient.conf in the /etc/dhcp folder wasn't being used which led to a couple of hours of googling and my post here. Now I'm wondering if dhcp3 is being used at all. :scratch: