Slow Surfing all of Sudden !?

[Chuck Swiger]

Graham Bentley wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:56:47 -0000, Chuck Swiger <cswiger at mac.com> wrote:
>> Run "tcpdump not port 80", and pay especial attention to the packets 
>> which are sent just before you notice these pauses.
>>
>> In general, it's probably a DNS lookup issue; you might find that 
>> disabling IPv6 lookups (unless you use IPv6) or running a local copy 
>> of bind with the -4 flag will help.
> 
> Chuck,
> 
> Thanks, tcpdump is cool :)

You are welcome.

> I can see use of my isp dns etc. Very oddly things have speeded up
> again at some point this afternoon ? Perhaps, its not 'my fault' and the
> isp are up to something ?

It could be many things; tcpdump will help you identify the real cause(s).

> Any tips for fine tuning tcp over adsl ?

Check your path MTU if you are using ADSL via PPPoE; you might need to change 
your MTU down from the default of 1500 to 1492 or 1470 or so.

The other thing to do is to set up a caching WWW proxy like Apache or Squid.

> BTW - I compiled ipv6 out of my kernel - did I do bad ?

Not if you don't use IPv6.

> BTW2 - Is it worth configuring Bind for local use on a single box ?
> Even from an educational viewpoint ?

Sure.  I just made my local nameserver authoritative for madserver.net so that 
a certain form of intrusive in-game advertising [1] doesn't work.  And I've 
even set up a webserver which returns a 1x1 transparent pixel for all 
requests, and forwarded some annoying adserver domains to it.

-- 
-Chuck

[1]: Thanks but no thanks, Massive, EA, & Ubisoft.