Just got my account, and I'm wondering if anybody has seen anything like this before. First off let me state that my account isn't fully up yet (dealing with the config panel), so this isn't related to my particular VPS.

The issue has been going on for a long time now, but I've chosen to go with linode anyway because this particular issue seems to be specific to my home internet connection somehow. Anyway, the issue is this - linode.com takes an incredibly long time to load. It isn't 100% of the time, but I'd say about 90-95% of requests take a huge amount of time. Sometimes as long as two minutes per page hit. This causes me problems in trying to do any configuration changes.

There's more to the issue, though. Most places I ssh into have a similar delay. When I looked into it a while ago, I found that it appeared to be an issue with not being able to look up my home IP address. While I cannot test this theory out on linode.com's homepage (not even sure why the homepage would be trying to lookup my IP), I can test it on my linode. By adding my IP into /etc/hosts, the ssh delay drops to around 5 seconds instead of 30-120.

I don't know exactly what this means. I'm terrible when it comes to understanding fully how networking works. So I can't really understand what's going on, much less how to get around the problem. What I've tried so far is connecting to a different network card (my computer has two) and connecting directly to the cable modem (charter communications if that makes any difference) instead of going through the router. Neither of those made any difference, so I can almost rule out anything local to my computer....

EXCEPT that at work I can hit linode instantly. When I ssh into another machine from home, I can run lynx to hit linode.com instantly. I have verified that lynx at home is also slow, so it isn't my browser (I already knew this from the ssh testing, but when one is confused one begins trying illogical things to narrow down the problem). I have also tried my wife's computer, and it too is amazingly slow on linode.com.

So it's specific to us somehow, but not in any way I know how to deal with. Is there something in the cable modem itself that is possibly preventing reverse lookups of our IP address? It's a Motorola SB5101. If somebody knows how to hack the thing into being a little more helpful, or any kind of workaround that could get this reverse lookup situation dealt with, I'd be very grateful.

I suppose there is the chance that apache is doing reverse lookups on ips. I know that there is an option to set that, so maybe there is some issue with ur ISP in relation to the reverse ip mapping.

It probably wouldnt be specific to your cable modem or network card, reverse mapping would occur on their end, so your probably better off getting intouch with them, and tell them of your problems and what youve done to test it.

Expect them to fob you off at first, as you go through first level support who probably wont have a clue about half the things youve mentioned to us, but probably best to be persistant.

Hope this helps somewhat

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ServerAdmin - www.our-lan.com
"Diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggy whilst looking for a really big stick"
"In my experiece, any attempt to make any system idiot proof will only challenge God to make a better idiot"

> (charter communications if that makes any difference)

I'm on Charter in Birmingham, AL and - other than a few
total outages - have experienced good service in the
last few months.

I did have a *LOT* - lot lot lot - of Charter DNS slowness,
but I installed a local DNS cache and now no problemo.
If there is any Charter DNS slowness now my local cache
is masking it.

Perhaps this is done to reduce Charter's bandwidth usage?
I don't know, but it did get so bad I tried a DNS cache...
Now Charter *appears* to run at light speed.

James

I was hoping not to have to deal with Charter's support. Last time I had an issue that turned out to be their fault, it took an amazing amount of time to get it dealt with. When I called their support I got somebody who just wasn't able to understand what I was talking about, so I ended up having to pretty much just wait for them to figure it out on their own.

Oh well, I guess the good news is it isn't something stupid I did on my end.

zunzun posted a decent workaround -- you just run a local caching DNS nameserver on your own PC (or on a UNIX box on the LAN). Trivial configuration to set up one and to repoint your PC to 127.0.0.1 for primary DNS nameserver or whereever you put it.

If it then works better, issue is with Charter's DNS server you're using.

If you want, private message me with your PC's IP and I could do a 'dig -x <your IP> +trace' from my Linode to verify reverse DNS properly works. Or you can do that from pretty much any machine on the Internet. (Even Windows boxes if you download the BIND 9 for Win32 package from www.isc.org; I bet Macs has dig already included if you fire up Terminal to run it.)

Also, you have other options. Such as rearranging the order of your DNS nameservers on your PC to see if perhaps your current primary nameserver was flaky or slow by making some other nameserver in the list primary.

Also, if you have a router that can run DD-WRT, it includes DNSMasq, which will provide the caching nameserver for you. With a few other options checked, it can also provide local DNS for DHCP-configured hosts behind the router.

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Bus error (passengers dumped)

Sweet, thanks! I'll give this stuff a try when I get a chance.