Fed up with slow DNS lookups
OK, I posted about this months ago and got a few replies with suggestions (thanks--checked them all out) but I am still suffering.
Here's the situation:
Home network with Motorola "Internet router". My client is running Win 8.1. I mostly use Chrome and Firefox, but the info below is from Firefox since it reports connection status at the bottom of the screen (Looking up . . ., Waiting for ... etc.)
The bad experience: especially for busy pages that make lots of connections, like Yahoo and other commercial Web sites, I have very very slow completed page presentation. Based on Firefox status messages the majority of time is spent waiting for the various contributors to the page (including adwords and other advertising junk.) OK, but a significant amount of time Firefox is displaying "Looking up xxx" Maybe 30-40 percent of the total wait time, though this varies and sometimes is not a factor.
The "Looking up xxx" status messages sometimes appear for up to 5-6 seconds at a time (for each lookup.) This is far above the maximum times reported by DNSBench (see below.)
In addition, I fairly frequently get an error saying "Can't locate server" and advising me to check my spelling and try again. This is a DNS error, not a failure of the target server to respond. And it's for absolutely mainstream URLs like amazon.com or google.com that are most certainly in DNS and should usually be cached. And these are not URL's I am entering by hand, of course, so they are not spelled incorrectly.
Nor is this limited to Firefox: in fact, I have gotten "Can't locate server" from my T-Bird e-mail client trying to locate smtp.cox.net!!
Tech support:
I have had a couple of sessions with Cox support, who confirm that my IPv4 DNS settings are correct. My Windows Connection Properties for IPv4 are set to accept the Cox-set defaults: 68.105.28.11, 29.11, and 28.12, in that order.
Things I've tried:
1. Using Google DNS responders. -- No apparent difference in performance.
2. Based on a suggestion here in the Cox Forum, I tried changing with my IPv6 settings (disabling IPv6 in Windows, accepting defaults, specifying Google IPv6 addresses.) Again, no apparent difference in performance with any of these.
3. Diagnosis with Gibson's DNSBench. This indicates that performance of the Cox default IPv4 responders is fine--as fast or faster than others in the DNSBench standard lineup, and good absolutely in terms of average and max lookup times. Of course these tests are at a point in time but I've run them several times with similar results.
I am at the end of my rope on this problem. Frankly, all I can think to do is try FIOS . . .
Any ideas out there???
Thanks