Webpages: Sometimes loads fine, sometimes loads slow, sometimes loads half the content.

thezeronumber

thezeronumber

thezeronumber

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None of the other forums seemed appropriate so I hope I'm doing right by posting this here.

The 3 minute video I recorded this afternoon explains most of the issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5a88ssqgLI

In short, at seemingly random times the pages I am looking at or the content I am viewing decides to slow-down despite speed tests showing the connection is fine. It's only on my Desktop and I have no problem with gaming or streaming, it's literally just when it comes to browsing and it doesn't matter which one I use either.

One odd thing is that sometimes if I close and re-open the browser it will load the content normally, like the previous slow-down never happened. On several occasions I have had the YouTube pre-video advert stop buffering or the main video refuse to load and after a quick on-off it suddenly works like normal, until of course it happens again in the near future. Another odd thing is that I can sometimes open another tab while the current page/video is struggling to load and whatever I am doing on the new tab will work fine, even if it's another video.

During the same time on 4 or 5 separate occasions whilst on YouTube the flash player had crashed. At first the sound would jumble, then the image would pixelate and break up before the entire thing turning to static and displaying the "flash plugin has crashed" text. I have never had such a problem before so naturally I started to think there was a problem with flash and I re-installed it, however nothing has changed.

I have no idea what is going on and I hope someone can shed some light on this matter.
 
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I had to google what 'google DNS' was, heh. I will look into it more and see if I can get it running.

We're on TalkTalk (hence the Sky broadband example in the video as we're changing providers in the next couple of weeks). I don't use the Desktop past midnight so I wouldn't know how it performs during those hours and finding out isn't an option either: Thin walls and a loud keyboard don't go well with grouchy family members! It's not the same but I have used the Desktop as early as 9am onwards and still had the same problems.

Edit: Followed the procedure below for IPv4 and I'm about to do the same for IPv6.

Go the Control Panel.
Click Network and Internet, then Network and Sharing Center, and click Change adapter settings.
Select the connection for which you want to configure Google Public DNS. For example:
To change the settings for an Ethernet connection, right-click Local Area Connection, and click Properties.
To change the settings for a wireless connection, right-click Wireless Network Connection, and click Properties.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
Select the Networking tab. Under This connection uses the following items, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) or Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) and then click Properties.
Click Advanced and select the DNS tab. If there are any DNS server IP addresses listed there, write them down for future reference, and remove them from this window.
Click OK.
Select Use the following DNS server addresses. If there are any IP addresses listed in the Preferred DNS server or Alternate DNS server, write them down for future reference.
Replace those addresses with the IP addresses of the Google DNS servers:
For IPv4: 8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4.
For IPv6: 2001:4860:4860::8888 and/or 2001:4860:4860::8844
Restart the connection you selected in step 3.
Test that your setup is working correctly; see Testing your new settings below.

The test involves connecting to google, bookmarking the page and then attempting to connect to it via that. It took 10 seconds to load on the first try (normal?) but it's practically instantaneous now. Too early to tell if this will change anything but I will report back with what has happened tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks for the help so far.
 
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It hasn't been long since I changed to Google DNS but I have seen no differences. The YouTube player went weird again as you can see here:
YouTubeglitch.png


A few minutes later I opened the YouTube bookmark in another tab and was staring at this screen for 10 or more seconds:
Notloading.png


Of course at times it works fine but it never lasts for too long.
 
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What value should I try changing it to/should I be going higher or lower? Or is it just one of those things you have to trial-and-error?

Edit: I have removed the Google DNS settings as it made no difference, plus recently I was browsing through a website and opened multiple tabs only to see them all go "oops, google chrome could not load this page" or "page unavailable", which is something I had never seen prior to changing.
 
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I had similar issues with my ISP

What caused it was one of the nodes in their network had a low MTU setting, any traffic routed thru it had issues
They told me to lower my MTU on my router to 1458 (i think( everything worked fine after that (one site badly effected was OCuk)
 
Have you tried a different router? I Recently had a lot problems with pages not loading or only part loading.

I tried changing DNS servers in both my Laptop, and the router, but still had the problem.

I would get the problem for about 2-3 minutes, then the problem would go. It would happen at random times of the day even at 3-4am, even after I had my upgrade to FTTC.

I found the problem by checking my routers logs while the problem was happening. It seems my router (BT businesshub) was blocking all DNS packets, all other packets seemed fine. I've now changed to a BT homehub3 for now and not had a single problem for weeks.
 
I'm busy until Wednesday evening so I haven't had a chance to try this stuff out yet but I will be sure to give it a go when I am next free and reply in greater detail then. Thanks everyone.
 
Had any luck fixing problem? As I know someone else suffering similar issue with TalkTalk and a Netgear DG834GT with 1.03.23 firmware.

The MTU has been changed to 1432 against its default 1458, but in case that doesn't make any difference considering further options.

With post 5 and your spoiler for Google DNS I would have put those settings direct in to the router instead of Windows. Unless having a TalkTalk provided router doesn't allow you to alter DNS servers.
 
Bane said:
Had any luck fixing problem? As I know someone else suffering similar issue with TalkTalk and a Netgear DG834GT with 1.03.23 firmware.

The MTU has been changed to 1432 against its default 1458, but in case that doesn't make any difference considering further options.

With post 5 and your spoiler for Google DNS I would have put those settings direct in to the router instead of Windows. Unless having a TalkTalk provided router doesn't allow you to alter DNS servers.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay in replying, I haven't been online in a while. Nothing so far has fixed the issue but I've decided to wait-it-out as next week we are changing ISP (PlusNet Unlimited Fibre, cannot wait) and I am hoping the new line and router will solve a couple of problems I have been having, one of which was detailed here.
 
For the instance I listed changing router setting for Domain Name Server Address seems to have cured slow and failed web page loading.

Changed from "Get Automatically From ISP" to "Use These DNS Servers" and using Google primary 8.8.8.8 and secondary 8.8.4.4
 
Change the MTU down to 1400 and see if that helps, if it does I suspect packet loss somewhere. The fibre upgrade will be great, so many levels above a Talktalk ADSL line - enjoy :)
 
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