Mozilla and long time in resolving Hostnames

[Matthew Seaman]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2003 at 08:41:02PM +0200, Mica Telodico wrote:
> Hi all , I've just installed FreeBSD 4.8 .
> 
> I've configured a PPPoE connection , and I've
> installed Mozilla for browsing internet , but it takes
> very long time in resolving Host names. 
> For example , if I open mozilla and I try to go to
> "www.google.com" it writes : "Resolving host
> www.google.com ......" And remains in this state for
> 2-3 minutes (very long time) , then it opens the
> requested page , and all the pages provided by the
> same Host opens quick as normal , but if I change host
> (for example www.yahoo.com) the problem comes again.
> I've tried with galeon too , and with mozilla 1.2 ,
> but nothing changes. Links , Lynx, and Opera for Linux
> works correctly (and now I'm writing from Opera ) ,
> why Mozilla doesn't ? What can be the motivation ?
> Thanks 

Sounds like a classic case of misconfigured DNS.  Double check your
/etc/resolv.conf -- it's quite likely that the first nameserver entry
is incorrect.  Maybe more than one is incorrect, given how long it
takes to come up with an answer.

Alternately, it might be a problem to do with IPv6 DNS lookups.
Mozilla does these by default (as properly configured applications are
meant to do now-a-days).  However, and despite the fact that the RFCs
defining the AAAA resource record were published nearly 10 years ago,
there are any number of broken DNS servers out there which simply
*won't reply* to an AAAA request.  The resolver on your system can do
nothing except wait until the request times out, which takes several
minutes.  Note: in this case it isn't Google's nameservers, as they
return practically instantaneously with the correct response that
there isn't a AAAA address for www.google.com.  Similarly for Yahoo.
Many purveyors of advertising however seem to use broken nameservers,
and that can consequently block loading of many web pages.

Seeing as it's Mozilla you're using, just blocking images from the
offending servers will enhance your web browsing experience.
Unfortunately, about the only sure way to be sure of never running
into this is to recompile your system without IPv6 support in the
kernel.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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