Sites taking ages to load - DNS issue?

MarcLister

MarcLister

MarcLister

Soldato
Joined
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Posts
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Location
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In the last 3-4 weeks I've noticed that some sites take ages to load. The main culprits are BBC News and Sport but I've noticed that Overclockers.co.uk is taking ages to load and in fact I'm getting error messages from Opera once it gives up trying to load the page.

Now I'd say with the networking knowledge I have that this appears to be a DNS issue. I'm not convinced because this issue only started in the last few weeks; my router DNS settings have been unchanged since the day I got it set up a couple of years ago. Anyway I decided to test my DNS settings with a testing app; it recommended some faster DNS servers so I changed those on the router. The problem still occurs so I check out my ISP's status page, BeThere, every so often. There's nothing listed as a problem that would affect me so I'm now quite confused and stuck.

Is there anything else that could be the cause of this considering the DNS settings were unchanged for ages when this problem first occured?
 
May or may not be related. but this sounds like the dreaded peering issues, Be suffer from continuously.

Was the reason why I left.

It's something to do with the routes Be traffic takes on their network, changing DNS servers wont change a thing, although I would suggest using google dns or open dns, as DNS is another thing BE suffered from.
 
morfmedia said:
Try using host file or opendns servers. Also try pinging servers in case theres high latency or packet loss
Click to expand...

Think my 2nd DNS server is OpenDNS.

I did a ping and a tracert to overclockers.co.uk.
Code: 
Pinging overclockers.co.uk [91.151.218.10] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 91.151.218.10:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

C:\Users\Marc>tracert overclockers.co.uk

Tracing route to overclockers.co.uk [91.151.218.10]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  192.168.1.1
  2     1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  . [192.168.100.1]
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  5     *       17 ms    17 ms  10.1.4.249
  6    17 ms    24 ms    24 ms  ethernet21-3.ar9.lon3.gblx.net [64.212.34.205]
  7    18 ms    17 ms    16 ms  4.68.110.157
  8    17 ms    17 ms    24 ms  vl-3601-ve-225.csw2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.166
.145]
  9    17 ms    17 ms    17 ms  ae-22-52.car2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.99]
 10    17 ms    16 ms    17 ms  gi25fx.L3.tcrb.SoV.Serverstream.net [212.187.160
.42]
 11     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 12     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 13     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 14     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 15     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 16     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 17     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 18     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 19     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 20     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 21     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 22     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 23     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 24     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 25     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 26     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 27     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 28     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 29     *        *        *     Request timed out.
 30     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Trace complete.
opethdisciple said:
May or may not be related. but this sounds like the dreaded peering issues, Be suffer from continuously.

Was the reason why I left.

It's something to do with the routes Be traffic takes on their network, changing DNS servers wont change a thing, although I would suggest using google dns or open dns, as DNS is another thing BE suffered from.
Click to expand...
Well looking at the tracert I think I've got exactly that. The first two entries would be my router and my modem. The 3rd and 4th lines MUST be where Be would come in. Hop 11 and onwards is just a joke.

Don't understand how I can be fine and not have this peering issue for 2-3 years and then suddenly get hit hard.

Who did you move to from Be? I can imagine I'll be off somewhere else if I can't fix this. I know that if I ask Be about this, their first question will be am I using the pre-supplied modem or not! :D:rolleyes: No, and have never used it.
 
Paracelsus said:
Try opening said pages just putting the IP addresses into your browser. If the same thing happens it's not DNS related
Click to expand...
I like your thinking! I've just tried 91.151.218.10 (Overclockers.co.uk) and the same thing happens. I knew it wasn't a DNS problem. :) Now to either ask Be for help or to jump ship?
 
overclockers.co.uk doesn't respond to ICMP.

Use a host such as 8.8.8.8

EDIT: Jump ship. Which exchange served by?
 
KIA said:
overclockers.co.uk doesn't respond to ICMP.

Use a host such as 8.8.8.8

EDIT: Jump ship. Which exchange served by?
Click to expand...
Ironically I've only just been able to load this thread up again! :D

Exchange is Leighton Buzzard (SMLBD). Who can you recommend, if anyone? Have been thinking about BT Infinity fibre. I work in a school and it's now summer hols for me so I've got 5 weeks to arrange a change of ISP. :)
 
MarcLister said:
Well looking at the tracert I think I've got exactly that. The first two entries would be my router and my modem. The 3rd and 4th lines MUST be where Be would come in. Hop 11 and onwards is just a joke.

Don't understand how I can be fine and not have this peering issue for 2-3 years and then suddenly get hit hard.

Who did you move to from Be? I can imagine I'll be off somewhere else if I can't fix this. I know that if I ask Be about this, their first question will be am I using the pre-supplied modem or not! :D:rolleyes: No, and have never used it.
Click to expand...

I was happy with Be for a while. I put up first with theur DNS issues in the early days, then they started getting these peering issues, which completly stopped certain websites form loading.

Eventually during one such episode in April last year, I knoticed the Infinity thread on this forum, and afer doing a little homework, realised I could get double the speed and save money by going with BT Infinity.

The rest is history.

---

And people still blindly recommend BE as one of the best ISP's. They where. They arent now. They have the issues the OP is seeing continuously and have no FTTC solution.

How is that a succesfull isp?
 
Last edited:
KIA said:
FTTC, if you can get it.

https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/s...unity/Coverage/ADSL_Availibility_Checker.html will tell you.

Sky FTTC is very good.
Click to expand...
Cheers. I think BT Infinity is available here. I wasn't aware that Sky did FTTC. Which is better for reliablity and speeds? I know BT do some restricting of traffic during peak hours. Do Sky do something similar?

opethdisciple said:
I was happy with Be for a while. I put up first with theur DNS issues in the early days, then they started getting these peering issues, which completly stopped certain websites form loading.

Eventually during one such episode in April last year, I knoticed the Infinity thread on this forum, and afer doing a little homework, realised I could get double the speed and save money by going with BT Infinity.

The rest is history.

---

And people still blindly recommend BE as one of the best ISP's. They where. They arent now. They have the issues the OP is seeing continuously and have no FTTC solution.

How is that a succesfull isp?
Click to expand...
I've been aware of the Infinity option for a while, I just didn't have this problem I've got now so I didn't see any point in moving.

I had the DNS issue early on; in fact I might not even have ever used Be's DNS servers but OpenDNS instead.

Can you give me a quick example of how you've saved money going from Be to BT Infinity? I thought that Infinity cost a bit more than Be's most expensive package?

Oh, and I agree with your last bit. BE were a very good ISP. Not anymore. Not by a long way. Not for a long time. They are working on an FTTC package but I think it's been mooted for over a year now. However even if their FTTC package turns out to be good value for money, it'll still be using the same internal network that seems to cause lots of problems.
 
MarcLister said:
Cheers. I think BT Infinity is available here. I wasn't aware that Sky did FTTC. Which is better for reliablity and speeds? I know BT do some restricting of traffic during peak hours. Do Sky do something similar?
Click to expand...

Sky, in my opinion. Shorter contract, no traffic shaping & better routing.
 
On the Sky fibre page now. It's telling me that I can get 40.0 - 40.0 Mbps. :) BT Infinity says about 59.1Mb download. I'll happily take 40Mbps if it means using a better network with no shaping. :) Weirdly when I put the phone number BE says I'm using into the BT Infinity checker, it comes back saying the phone number isn't on the BT network! :confused: And the phone line definitely isn't with BE.

Anyway the Sky site is telling me that for £20 a month I can have Sky Fibre Unlimited. Sky Line rental is £12.25 a month giving me a total of £32.25 a month for the fibre and line rental from Sky. I reckon I pay at least £33.19 to BE and BT for the BB and line rental. £22.44 a month to BE and, I assume, £10.75 a month to BT for the line rental.

Sky are quoting one off costs of £50 for the activating of fibre, £2.18 for posting the broadband hardware to me and £10 for the line rental set-up giving a total of £62.18 which isn't too shabby. Are Sky doing any offers that might help reduce the £62.18 or am I just better off paying it without trying to reduce it? :)

Looking at the Sky BB box I would keep my router and get rid of my modem. :)
 
KIA said:
You need to call them to order 80/20.
Click to expand...
80 down and 20 up?

My brother is with Virgin cable. He's wondering if we could share this Sky fibre. My Linksys WRT54GL router is running Tomato, so I could set up some QoS to ensure we don't affect each other when using this. He games a lot and thus wants the best pings he can get. Should I agree to this or are we better off keeping our own BB connections? We've tried sharing before, courtesy of a 50m CAT5e cable between our rooms, and all I got was him moaning on MSN that the pings were really high and it must be me doing something. The fact that I wasn't actually downloading anything or using the connection in any way didn't do anything to quieten him down so I'm wary of doing this because if we were to share a single line, if there were any problems it'd take a while to get him back onto his own connection.

We get our TV/phone with Virgin and Mum is thinking of switching everything to Sky so that we get broadband from Sky instead of broadband from Virgin for my brother and broadband from BE and BT for me and just consolidate everything into a single bill with a single company. Heck, I might even be able to get Sky Sports and Sky F1 HD!!! :D:cool:
 
Orcvader said:
Yup. As for pings, no idea if you'll see the same problem, but your brother might've been having the usual Virgin overcongestion problem.
Click to expand...
I don't think the ping problem he had was because of Virgin. We only ever shared my connection which has always been ADSL and not VM cable. So any problems with the VM congestion wouldn't have affected us in this case. Think I need to log into my router and see what QoS options I've got before I decide on sharing it with my brother. We've then got the problem of connecting our rooms up. I'm in the basement and he's on the first floor so that's what the 50m CAT5e cable was for. Not so sure Mum will like having a lose ethernet cable winding it's way around the house. :p
 
MarcLister said:
80 down and 20 up?

My brother is with Virgin cable. He's wondering if we could share this Sky fibre. My Linksys WRT54GL router is running Tomato
Click to expand...

Up to. It'll be close to the BT estimate. You might need a new router as the WRT54GL probably isn't powerful enough to route 60Mb/s & do QoS.
 
KIA said:
Up to. It'll be close to the BT estimate. You might need a new router as the WRT54GL probably isn't powerful enough to route 60Mb/s & do QoS.
Click to expand...
Can you recommend a new router? I was looking at a Billion BiPAC 7800N. Could I use that to sit between the Sky modem and my network? I'd need to be able to disable a modem function and use it as a router.
 
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