FreeBSD is Very slow to load some sites >

[Bob Johnson]

> From: "Galdes, Andrew (ERHS)" <galdes.andrew at saugov.sa.gov.au>
> To: freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
> Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 08:27:37 +0930
> Subject: FreeBSD is Very slow to load some sites
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> Freebsd seems to take a long time (up to ten minutes) to load some web
> sites. When i use Linux or Windows it seems to load at normal speed. I have
> installed Freebsd (same version) on another computer and it has the same
> trouble. I have tried both firefox and konqueror. 
> 
> The website is www.anz.com.au. I suspect the security of the site is the
> problem but cannot be sure.

It seems to be some sort of DNS issue, but I don't know exactly what.  An HTTP 
connection to www.anz.com.au takes about 45 seconds to establish, regardless 
of the browser.  E.g.

time telnet www.anz.com.au 80
Trying 202.2.59.40...
Connected to www.anz.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed.

real    0m44.633s


A DNS query, however, responds almost immediately:

time dig www.anz.com.au

[...]
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;www.anz.com.au.                        IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
www.anz.com.au.         9798    IN      CNAME   www.anz.com.
www.anz.com.            1       IN      A       202.2.59.40
www.anz.com.            1       IN      A       202.2.56.40
[...]

real    0m0.288s


And an HTTP connection by IP number instead of by name responds almost 
immediately, also.  I see no packets coming from them (e.g. IDENT queries) 
that would account for the delay.  One of their IP numbers (202.2.56.40) has 
no PTR record, but I don't think that has anything to do with it.


> 
> Another thread on this list "[kde-freebsd] Konqueror very slow displaying
> some sites" puts it down to DNS. Any ideas?
> 

Could be an issue with the FreeBSD resolver.  It's happened in the past, but I 
thought that was all cleared up now.  I don't know if "dig" uses the native 
resolver or implements one of its own.  I suspect the latter.


- Bob