50M The internet is so slow, is it the football?

JPAC · 13-07-2014, 21:24

The internet is so slow, is it the football?

qasdfdsaq · 13-07-2014, 21:56

No, it's nyancat.

nialli · 13-07-2014, 22:01

DNS broken again? Fine with Google DNS

jb66 · 13-07-2014, 22:04

Dns again, ho hum, first line will be booking me to "take a closer look" at customers broadband next week...

dodgem22 · 13-07-2014, 22:50

mine has been slowing right down to on and off for weeks now. What is DNS? I thought it might be my anti virus software so changed to a different anti virus and it was fine for about two days and now slowing right down again every now and again such a pain.

nialli · 13-07-2014, 22:57

You can change to GoogleDNS. More info here http://vmhd.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/h...gin-media.html

dodgem22 · 13-07-2014, 22:57

just googled dns think I understand it now

adduxi · 14-07-2014, 10:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by nialli

You can change to GoogleDNS. More info here http://vmhd.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/h...gin-media.html

You could also go with OpenDNS and have web filtering as well to boot ....

JPAC · 23-07-2014, 10:06

So is there a check or test for DNS problems? It was slow again just now. Can the DNS settings be changed for a SH2? Thanks.

General Maximus · 23-07-2014, 11:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by JPAC

So is there a check or test for DNS problems?

Not exactly, there are various tests you can perform to see if a problem might be a dns issue, such as pinging the dns server or submitting a query

Quote:

Originally Posted by JPAC

Can the DNS settings be changed for a SH2?

nope, and this is the joke with the shub. Being able to assign your own dns servers is one of the most basic features of a router yet VM chose to remove it. This is one of the many reasons why you should buy your own proper router. I understand VM's reasoning for it, it just eliminates one more potential problem when diagnosing connection problems (you only have to worry about your own dns servers being at fault and you are in a position to know whether there is a current fault) but it also creates a single point of failure which has been demonstrated quite nicely over the last 3 weeks.

qasdfdsaq · 23-07-2014, 14:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by General Maximus

Not exactly, there are various tests you can perform to see if a problem might be a dns issue, such as pinging the dns server or submitting a query

Actually some moderately comprehensive DNS tests are included as part of Netalyzr. These test both forward and reverse lookups of a collection of popular domains, response times, reliability, whether your DNS server can correctly reach all the root servers, and also how your DNS server responds to odd and malformed requests.

---------- Post added at 14:10 ---------- Previous post was at 13:02 ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by General Maximus

but it also creates a single point of failure which has been demonstrated quite nicely over the last 3 weeks.

Not exactly. VM's DNS servers aren't a single point of failure, they're made of multiple redundant systems with active and passive backups. Including a minimum of two DNS servers being assigned by DHCP which gives, by definition, at least two different points of failure.

Course, that's how any sane network would be engineered. If VM's backend DNS services are actually designed around a single physical point of failure then that's some pretty epic fail by the network architects. But conversely, I'm pretty sure there's a dozen different parts of the DNS service that can blow up or die and you wouldn't notice a thing.

In the end any consumer service is going to have multiple single-point-of-failure chokepoints anyway, namely, the modem, the line coming into your house, your cabinet, and so forth. It's not meant to be uber reliable.

General Maximus · 23-07-2014, 14:42

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Not exactly. VM's DNS servers aren't a single point of failure, they're made of multiple redundant systems with active and passive backups. Including a minimum of two DNS servers being assigned by DHCP which gives, by definition, at least two different points of failure

I understand that, I meant that by restricting yourself to a single providers dns services that you only asking for trouble, especially when they are known to be penny pinchers. VM might assign multiple servers for redundancy and implement other redundancy solutions but they still manage to suffer from major outages, far more than you would expect.

qasdfdsaq · 23-07-2014, 15:35

But if it's run properly I don't see how restricting yourself to one provider's DNS servers is any different to restricting yourself to a different provider's DNS servers but still having to access it over the first provider's internet connection. All you get then is even more points of failure.

Kushan · 23-07-2014, 17:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

But if it's run properly I don't see how restricting yourself to one provider's DNS servers is any different to restricting yourself to a different provider's DNS servers but still having to access it over the first provider's internet connection. All you get then is even more points of failure.

I think what General is getting at is that if you can define a primary and secondary DNS, you may as well define 2 different providers just in case one goes down.

We've seen enough VM DNS issues to know that Virgin's DNS can go down while leaving the rest of the network intact. It just makes sense.

Or to put it another way, the key point is what I've highlighted. That's a big "if".