TimeWarner/RoadRunner DNS WTF



  • Over the past few months, and probably even longer, I've noticed that DNS resolution queries to the roadrunner dns servers sometimes time out, or take ages to complete. I have mentioned this to their tech support, who absolutely refuse to believe it's on their end. They wanted me to hook a windows machine directly to the internet so that they could verify the behavior. I did no such thing simply because I don't want to go through the trouble to try and convince a "technician" that would undoubtedly never be convinced. A friend of mine lives down the street, and has the same issues.

    To summarize the issue:

    ping, open a webpage, do anything for any domain. (www.yahoo.com, dailywtf.com, etc...)

    Sometimes (not always), but around 75-80% of the time, the resolution request either times out, or takes longer than 30 seconds. (resolution request == requesting the IP address for the domain name). Even if a browsed site works, this often results in the adds of those sites timing out. My friend mentioned that myspace NEVER loads completely (because of the adds).

    Changing the DNS servers that the network connection uses to ANY open/free DNS resolution server IMMEDIATELY resolves the issue. All pages load instantaneously, including myspace, in all of their glory, with no delay at all. (It's almost like switching ISPs).

    When my friend told me of the problem he was having, I told him how I fixed it and he asked if I could come by and do the same for him. Nedless to say, when I did so his jaw dropped when he loaded myspace. He was astonished how fast it loaded. Never before had myspace loaded in under 2 seconds (like any page always should).

    Frankly, I don't want to take the 2 hours on the phone with their tech, nor do I want to wait at home for 6 hours while a technician comes by to verify the behavior. My friend down the road however....

    My Friend on the subject:

    <font face="Times New Roman">So my friend fixes my slow internet by switching DNS servers to a public/open DNS server. My internet service is miraculously fixed and restored to optimal surfing capability. Absolutely amazed and astonished I call BrightHouse to complain and to see if I can get any credit towards my account for at least a months worth of horrible service. After being redirected many times thru the automated answering menu, I finally get to talk to someone from billing. I explain my issues and ask for some sort of a credit, to which I get the answer of pretty much "Well since this is the first time you've called to complain we can only credit your account for this week"...okay fine whatever, bottom line is there's still a problem with my service…so the guy schedules for a technician to come to my house on a Saturday since I work Mon-Fri. I scheduled it for between 8am-11am... guy doesn't show up until 3pm...

    I explain to the technician that if I keep the settings to "automatically detect dns server" then the internet is slow as hell, it takes forever to load a page if it chooses to load the page, if not you have to refresh over and over again, and even if it loads the page it wont fully load, pictures will be missing etc. etc...    The guy goes into his troubleshooting mode and unplugs, plugs back in cables here and there…..he thinks I have spyware so he runs adaware... (I just did a fresh install of XP Media edition a few days prior so I highly doubted I had spyware)... adaware finds nothing... he then concludes that my wireless router must be bad because it works fine if my laptop is connected directly to the cable modem…….i concurred, and showed him that even if connected THROUGH the wireless router….when automatically detecting DNS server, its halfassed, BUT if going thru an external DNS server it works flawlessly... after demonstrating this…he simply says "it doesn't make sense, this is the first instance out of hundreds of houses ive been to that I cannot explain why it works using an external DNS server" he then explains that if I use an external dns server "logically it should take longer than if I went thru brighthouses DNS server" I proved him wrong and he wrote on the report that I demonstrated the problem and service is bad using BH DNS server, but using external DNS server works fine...

    Next day I call back brighthouse to then see what they have to say….i explain what happened and the tech support lady wants to connect me to trouble shooting, so they can trouble shoot my problem... I tell the lady "I had one of your technicians come over and HE couldn't figure it out, what is troubleshooting going to do for me?" and the lady tells me there's nothing she can do other than transfer me to do a troubleshoot (which I couldn't do cuz I was at work)

    So now im left with... i have to call back and troubleshoot when im at home and in front of my computer... but supposedly for however long the problem goes unresolved I'm being credited for it... so supposedly I'm not going to pay shit for a bill until someone can admit it's the BrightHouse DNS servers that's causing the problem...</font>


    The one thing he didn't check was a comparison if direct connection using BrightHouse DNS to direct connection using external DNS. At the time this happened to me, I was using a linux box as my router. So the linux box was directly connected to the cable modem. This configuration still lead to the same problem. I asked him about this just now and he's going to experiment with it when he gets home, but WTF man. That box went down a couple months ago and I switched to a linksys WRT. That went when we had some power surges like a month or two ago, so I replaced it with yet another router. All routers have exhibited the same behavior, so if it's the router, then there's something wrong with all Linksys WRTs... Yeah right...

     Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if this happened in the whole country, the southeast, or just even florida.... But this is in the Tampa, FL area. Town N' Country to be more specific. If anyone else has experienced these issues, please report it to brighthouse. This is really pissing me off, and I doubt that most people would know how to work around this issue.
     



  • I used to be one of the phone techs for Roadrunner, a couple of years ago (which means by now everything I know is wrong).  It's kind of depressing to see that they're still demanding you connect directly to the internet if there's a router; pretty much every other ISP I've dealt with has long since given that fight up.

    All of that said: Roadrunner's network infrastructure used to be totally patchwork, as TW bought out various local cable ISPs and "integrated" them.  The various local NOCs are probably run by a weird mix of TW people and the original cable ISP's people, and TW regularly adds promotional and service-related material to DNS so it's not unlikely they've fucked up the DNS configuration for Tampa.  (We used to get a lot of calls from there.)

    My own ISP, Shaw cable, has its own "interesting" DNS behaviours. Do what I did: install bind and run a nameserver yourself.  It's surprisingly easy.  Drop me a line out of band and I'll give you my named.conf and zonefiles, if you want.



  • I also had to manually specify DNS servers to get my internet to work. In my case, however, it's adelphia being evil. They don't like you using routers at all: They want you to pay seperatly for each and every computer in your house. So, their servers simply neglect to tell any connection comming from a MAC address in linksys's assigned range what the DNS server addresses are.

     

    I just plugged my computer directly into the wall, wrote down the DNS ips, hooked the router back up, and set them manually...

     

    They couldn't get away with just denying routers ip addresses. That would probably get them sued. Denying DNS servers, however, is perfectly fine - nothing in the contract says thay have to supply that service! (I checked).
     



  • I once had a DNS outage of a week.  So I set up a NetBSD box I had laying around as my DNS server.  I obtained named.conf and zone files from the appropriate FTP site, but asking a friend (over the phone) to DNS the FTP server for me.  Worked like a charm.  Never did get a credit.



  • I also had to manually specify DNS servers to get my internet to work. In my case, however, it's adelphia being evil. They don't like you using routers at all: They want you to pay seperatly for each and every computer in your house. So, their servers simply neglect to tell any connection comming from a MAC address in linksys's assigned range what the DNS server addresses are.
    I just plugged my computer directly into the wall, wrote down the DNS ips, hooked the router back up, and set them manually...

    Couldn't you just clone your PC's MAC address on your router?

    My WRT is setup like that so i never had to bother letting comcast know i had a router... i didn't know if they would try to charge extra or not...
     



  • [quote user="Isuwen"]

     So, their servers simply neglect to tell any connection comming from a MAC address in linksys's assigned range what the DNS server addresses are.

    [/quote]

    use the MAC spoofing feature of your router  



  • Why would TW/RR and BrightHouse (apparently another broadband ISP in the same area) have the same problem?  What's the relationship between those entities?  (I have TW/RR in the Los Angeles area and it generally works just fine.  Well, except my wife's laptop sucking down a torrent at max speed causes my laptop's wireless link to become terribly slow and flaky, but I don't blame the ISP for that.)

     



  • My university has the same problem. It affects thousands of people! After switching to OpenDNS I haven't had any problems while everyone else more often than not has no web access.

    I haven't figured out yet how to work around them blocking all incoming connections though.
     



  • use the MAC spoofing feature of your router  

     

    It hasn't got one. :( 



  •  Everyone; until when, are we going to take this! Everybody thinks they can step on us, mostly because most of us let them get away with it.

    Teach them how important we are, change providers, and drop Brighthouse like a brick.

    This happened last January, half of the users did not get credit for the outage; they take email addresses that have being used for over 10 yrs (since Time Warner was in town) with no logical explanation, reassigning them to new Customers/users, exposing any personal and confidential information we may get via email, and when we inquire why?, they tell us to go and get a Google account to avoid this from happening.

    Now, again we have to put up with them blaming us and our home networks for the issues, just because they cannot admit they screw up? Are we going to keep letting them get away with this? Again?

    Came on, this is America, the land of the people; drop them (I did) and show them, they cannot treat us this way. Drop them so that “The customer is always right” comes back.

    Drop them so services can improve, drop them so they can realized their pay check comes from us.



  • @Gteck said:

     Everyone; until when, are we going to take this! Everybody thinks they can step on us, mostly because most of us let them get away with it.

    Teach them how important we are, change providers, and drop Brighthouse like a brick.

    This happened last January, half of the users did not get credit for the outage; they take email addresses that have being used for over 10 yrs (since Time Warner was in town) with no logical explanation, reassigning them to new Customers/users, exposing any personal and confidential information we may get via email, and when we inquire why?, they tell us to go and get a Google account to avoid this from happening.

    Now, again we have to put up with them blaming us and our home networks for the issues, just because they cannot admit they screw up? Are we going to keep letting them get away with this? Again?

    Came on, this is America, the land of the people; drop them (I did) and show them, they cannot treat us this way. Drop them so that “The customer is always right” comes back.

    Drop them so services can improve, drop them so they can realized their pay check comes from us.

     

    Yeah, fight the man, power to the people... do you honestly think that more than one or two percent of users have the technical knowledge to understand such a problem, let alone care enough to do something about it? Your call to action is as bad as those of the obsessed sci-fi fans who try to get TV shows uncanceled by sending 4000 emails to Paramount. I'm all for honor and truth, but suggesting that 'the land of the people' will revolt en masse over an obscure technical issue is just absurd.



  • @Isuwen said:

    use the MAC spoofing feature of your router  

    It hasn't got one. :( 

    It's a Linksys WRT and it hasn't got one?

    Every Linksys WRT I've owned has one.  My current one calls it 'MAC Address Clone' instead of MAC spoofing.  I seem to recall the prior one called it something different, but I can't recall what it was.

    That having been said, I'm assuming that if it really doesn't have something as simple as MAC spoofing, it probably doesn't have a lot of things.  New router maybe?  I realize they're a bit old, but my WRT54G works very well for me.



  • @tgape said:

    @Isuwen said:

    use the MAC spoofing feature of your router  

    It hasn't got one. :( 

    It's a Linksys WRT and it hasn't got one?

    Every Linksys WRT I've owned has one.  My current one calls it 'MAC Address Clone' instead of MAC spoofing.  I seem to recall the prior one called it something different, but I can't recall what it was.

    That having been said, I'm assuming that if it really doesn't have something as simple as MAC spoofing, it probably doesn't have a lot of things.  New router maybe?  I realize they're a bit old, but my WRT54G works very well for me.

    Given the rezziness of this thread and the fact that the user you're responding to hasn't been seen since January 2009, I'm going to discount the possibility of them seeing your response.

    Nice try though.



  • @belgariontheking said:

    Given the rezziness of this thread
    Please define "rezziness" for me. The google, it does nothing.



  •  Interesting that this thread got bumped. I recently decided to ditch BrightHouse/RR yet again due to their customer support incompetence. I'm on an official boycott now but it's really hard since they are the only ISP that can provide me with > 3MB service where I live. What happened this time was that I was late on a bill for the current month and previous month. I had paid for the previous month and had scheduled payment for the current month for the next Wednesday. They cut my service off that Friday. When I called the next week to pay what had been scheduled (when my service was turned off, the scheduled payment was unscheduled) the customer service lady said I needed to pay an additional two months in advance to get my service turned back on. The service was about $160 a month. I had $160 in outstanding charges (for the CURRENT month of service). She wanted me to pay $500 to get my service back on. I asked when it would get turned back on and she said it would take another week or so to get the service turned back on. I asked if I would be discounted for the days in which I had no service and she said no. I asked why it would cost so much and why I would be charged for days when I didn't have service. She proceeded to tell me basically "Because that's what our system shows" At this point I asked to speak to the manager. She proceeded to try and explain everything she had read from the screen again. So I had to repeatedly ask for her manager. Once on the phone, the manager (assuming it was a manager) proceeded to tell me to get my service turned back on I would have to pay $800. How he came up with that number I have NO idea. I asked how he came up with the number and he told me that I would have to pay for yet another additional month to get my account turned back on. I asked why is it that a long-time valued customer has to pay such outrageous fees and he proceeded to tell me that I need to pay $800 to get my service turned back on. They were very, VERY rude during all of this (surprisingly so to the point where I thought I had reached a mom and pop shop that was having a bad day) and provided no information as to why these things would cost so much money. He also said that they wouldn't discount any of the current month of service for the days in which my service had been turned off. It was at this point in which I said "F this, I'll just switch to FIOS" and hung up the phone. A couple days later I called into their automated system and paid the outstanding balance for the CURRENT month and their automated system had my balance correct. The following Friday a representative from them showed up at my door to pick up the DVR and box. It was unexpected. She told me that if I didn't hand the equipment over that it'd be taken up with collections. I made a formal complaint about my experience with her. I gave her the equipment she desired. I asked her what would've happened had I not been home and she said it would've been taken up with collections. I asked her why I wasn't notified that they were coming and she said that I should've been. I wasn't. Lucky I was home at the time. This experience has left me with such a distaste that I hope BrightHouse networks does end up dropping FOX so that millions of BrightHouse subscribers will drop BrightHouse for being so god damned shitty. The only way I would even recommend BrightHouse in the future is if I got a written letter of apology from someone there, free service for half a year, and solid evidence of improvement in customer service. I know that probably won't happen but one can hope.

    Unfortunately FIOS is unavailable in my building at the moment... I'm still boycotting Bright House though. Just thinking back to this incident infuriates me to no end.

    I've started the procedure to switch ISPs at work off of Business RR. I'm also making sure the rest of the office cancels their BrightHouse accounts. I'm also making sure all of my friends switch as well. 

    Another humorous anecdote: RR recently implemented a feedback loop in their mail system. Being a good mail admin I made sure we were subscribed to their feedbackloop. We hadn't received a SINGLE feedback complaint from RR since early Nov, yet on Dec 15th they decided to put us on their block list. No notice from them. I didn't catch it for a couple days when I was going through the mail server's log and noticed an ERROR message for RR directed mails with a url as to why it was denied. I requested to be lifted and was. I e-mailed them asking why, and was provided with a VERY thorough and detailed explanation that completely satisfied my curiosity. The one issue though was the fact that it seemed our server was taken off of their feedback loop without any notice. Now I plan on resubmitting the feedback loop request form every month or so assuming we don't get any complaints.

    Ugh BH has left the worst taste in my mouth. I feel like puking lol.



  • @GoatCheez said:

    I asked her why I wasn't notified that they were coming and she said that I should've been. I wasn't.

    I suspect that they attempted to notify you with an email to your Bright House address - you know, the one they turned off at the start of this rant.  I believe that is SoP for these sorts of places.



  • Thanks to these threads about how bad RR's DNS is, I pointed my router at OpenDNS servers instead and my surfing speed increased so much that I wonder if RR isn't deliberately slowing their DNS servers down as a way of throttling bandwidth on their network.



  • @RichinNJ said:

    Thanks to these threads about how bad RR's DNS is, I pointed my router at OpenDNS servers instead and my surfing speed increased so much that I wonder if RR isn't deliberately slowing their DNS servers down as a way of throttling bandwidth on their network.

    I too just realized this issue.  I noticed yesterday when browsing youtube.com videos that I could rarely get more than 500kbps.  I have a 40mbps line!!  In my troubleshooting I ran across a blurb that hinted at the issue being RR/BH DNS servers.  I switched my DNS servers to non-RR DNS servers and to my surprise my Youtube experience immediately went to 5mbps for videos.

    I second the notion that BH/RR is unofficially throttling bandwidth via this *issue* with their DNS servers.  I've seen reports about this very issue since early 2009.  I've never noticed the issue directly though except for the past few weeks.  Maybe it is a legit problem requiring expertise they apparently don't have!

    FYI, I am in the Tampabay area of FL.



  • @mcdonamw said:

    I too just realized this issue.  I noticed yesterday when browsing youtube.com videos that I could rarely get more than 500kbps.  I have a 40mbps line!!  In my troubleshooting I ran across a blurb that hinted at the issue being RR/BH DNS servers.  I switched my DNS servers to non-RR DNS servers and to my surprise my Youtube experience immediately went to 5mbps for videos.
    If that's true there is something so FUBAR happening that I don't even want to begin to guess.



    At least your ISPs DNS servers will actually return the correct records. Mine will serve NXDOMAINs like crazy.



  • @Lingerance said:

    If that's true there is something so FUBAR happening that I don't even want to begin to guess.

    At least your ISPs DNS servers will actually return the correct records. Mine will serve NXDOMAINs like crazy.

    Yeah tell me about it.  At work I'm seeing issues with some ISPs hijacking user's DNS (i.e. Comcast).  It's playing hell on our VPN connections.  *sigh*.  I just did some more testing and sure enough the issue still remains.  I'm using http://www.youtube.com/my_speed to test my speed using their test video on that page.  Using BH/RR DNS, 200kbps - 500kbps... Using DynDNS servers, anywhere from 2mbps - 7 mbps the entire time.  It's just ridiculous!!  The only thing I don't understand is how DNS is even a factor.  Once an IP is resolved, it's cached by IE (which requires me to end all IExplore.exe processes between DNS changes for accurate tests).  How it can affect bandwidth between two IP connected systems is beyond me!  That goes against all knowledge I've gained thus far in my career.



  •  That sounds completely crazy. The DNS servers are only used to resolve an IP and they in no way impact actual bandwidth. The only thing they can impact is resolution speed. Once the IP is obtained the DNS servers don't matter at all. Can you take a video or screenshots? Are you sure your tests are identical in all other respects? It's.... just.... nuts.....

     

     

    I'm also Tampabay area... and the brighthouse guy is coming on Friday lol... I wish I could get FIOS... *sigh*



  • @GoatCheez said:

     That sounds completely crazy. The DNS servers are only used to resolve an IP and they in no way impact actual bandwidth. The only thing they can impact is resolution speed. Once the IP is obtained the DNS servers don't matter at all. Can you take a video or screenshots? Are you sure your tests are identical in all other respects? It's.... just.... nuts.....

    I'm also Tampabay area... and the brighthouse guy is coming on Friday lol... I wish I could get FIOS... *sigh*

    NUTS INDEED!!!  Hopefully I can attach these properly.  They are fairly large as I don't feel like loading up a better screenshot program.  My screenshots include a shot of configured DNS servers, the Youtube test video, and my network monitor gadget with scrolling chart.  The first one was done WITHOUT RR DNS... The second was done WITH RR DNS.  I did the second immediately after, so pay attention to the network monitor history.. you can see the previous traffic, then the break in connection while making changes, and then the new traffic which is substantially slower.

    NOTE:  There were no other configuration changes... JUST DNS.

    Test WITHOUT RRDNS

    Test WITH RRDNS



  • So I've done some more testing and decided to run a packet sniffer while the issue is occuring under both scenarios...  I've come to the following conclusion:

    Under both scenarios, the video traffic is actually coming from v5.lscache8.l.google.com, on port 80.

    The interesting note: 

    RR DNS servers resolve this host to 74.125.7.92.

    DynDNS servers resolve this host to 208.117.248.220.

    So my thought may be based on the fact that I'm hitting a completely different server. 

    More interesting note, I set a host file on my PC to resolve this host to the host that RR DNS servers and set my DNS servers to non-RR DNS servers.  This is to verify if it was indeed this host, regardless of DNS server. 

    My PC correctly resolves the host as set in the host file BUT when I'm running the actual video on youtube, somehow my machine decides to ignore my host file and instead resolve to what the non-RR DNS servers resolve it to.  At this point I have no way to verify if it is the host or not.

    An additional thought is, I notice this slowdown issue even with non-youtube sites so I really doubt it's just this single discrepancy between youtube hosts.

    I think I'm done wasting my time on this!



  • The only thing I can think is that, when you use RR DNS, they are proxying you, possibly without your consent (you'll have to check your TOS) - i.e. their server requests the data and then re-serves it to you instead of allowing you to resolve the server directly. This could be the cause of the throttling you experience, and why you need to do a DNS cache dump to 'fix' the issue, as you would still be resolving the IP to their proxy server if you don't perform the cache dump.

    They could be doing some sort of heuristic checking for viruses, etc in an effort to keep you 'safer' ... but they are probably just throttling so they can overallocate the bandwidth and gouge the masses. As a side effect, they could then also record all of your internet activity and then charge more for targeted ads on their services (like webmail and their homepage).



  • @GoatCheez said:

     That sounds completely crazy. The DNS servers are only used to resolve an IP and they in no way impact actual bandwidth. The only thing they can impact is resolution speed. Once the IP is obtained the DNS servers don't matter at all. Can you take a video or screenshots? Are you sure your tests are identical in all other respects? It's.... just.... nuts.....

     

     

     But the point is that resolution speed ultimately throttles bandwidth by creating "dead air".  A reasonable page such as CNN.COM takes many DNS lookups. Bypassing the RR DNS servers seems to be making pages load a couple of seconds faster.  That couple of seconds is saved bandwidth.  Put a 50ms delay into each DNS lookup and the average user might view one or two fewer pages per hour.  That adds up.



  • @rad131304

    I do not believe proxying is at play here.  If they were proxying my connection, it would be done based on all my traffic flowing through the gateway, regardless of what DNS server I use.  The same would apply to any heuristic scanning.

    I also do not believe this to be a cache issue as I am showing Google's name servers assign a time-to-live (TTL) of 300 seconds for this record, which is very short in the grand scheme of things.  Any DNS server caching this record would have updated its cache by now.

    @RichinNJ

    Your assessment is true, however, based on the packet scan I've done, during the entire viewing of the movie the traffic is coming from a single IP.  In DNS world, once a host is resolved to IP, that resolution is cached for the length of period as denoted by the TTL of the record.  In this case, there is no multiplication of adverse affects of multiple latent DNS lookups.



  • @mcdonamw said:

    I do not believe proxying is at play here.  If they were proxying my connection, it would be done based on all my traffic flowing through the gateway, regardless of what DNS server I use.  The same would apply to any heuristic scanning.

    Not necessarily, they could be performing tunnel proxying for selected high bandwidth sites. Even though, on a lot of the newer hardware, you can do IP based throttling and bandwidth control at the gateway (some probably even can do DNS queries, but I'm not current on this), it's going to be far easier to do at the DNS server for load-balanced domains like youtube, especially if you have legacy infrastructure supporting the user base which may not support DNS queries. I agree that they probably would not do tunnel proxying for heuristic scanning - I was just offering it up as a reason besides bandwidth throttling that might cause your throttling issue.

    The bottom line is that I just don't see any other reason for a DNS server change to cause the change in performance other than them playing shell games with the resolved server IP since QoS isn't well-supported ATM in IPv4.

    @mcdonamw said:

    I also do not believe this to be a cache issue as I am showing Google's name servers assign a time-to-live (TTL) of 300 seconds for this record, which is very short in the grand scheme of things.  Any DNS server caching this record would have updated its cache by now.

    If I called it a cache issue, that's wrong as it's not technically an 'issue' - the DNS cache is doing exactly what it's supposed to do - but with a DNS server IP update, you don't necessarily get a DNS cache purge, and if they are playing the previously mentioned shell game with resolved IPs, then cache TTL means a possilbe delay in the updating of the server IP resolution which would mean a temporary rollover of the issue until the TTL expired and the record was updated from the newly specified DNS server.

    As a side note, I think Google uses that TTL for load balancing (it's the min allowed in the RFC IIRC), but thats just a SWAG.



  • @mcdonamw said:

    The interesting note: 

    RR DNS servers resolve this host to 74.125.7.92.

    DynDNS servers resolve this host to 208.117.248.220.

    RR DNS resolves to a google CIDR block, the DynDNS resolves to a youtube CIDR block, so that probably kills my tunnel proxy theory (I doubt google is selling youtube throttling to ISPs). But your comment about it occurring on other sites supports the tunnel proxy theory .... I'm going to blame dark matter and dark energy and call it a night as well. 



  • It’s probably not a nefarious plot by your ISP (unless they are slowing down the traffic based on source IP and are unaware that there are also YouTube servers in the 208.117.224.0/19 range). Google’s CDN, like most distributed CDNs these days, almost certainly tries to connect you to the closest DC/cheapest transit by returning different DNS records based on your geographical location/time of day. This tends to work because ISPs generally set up caching DNS servers geographically near to the customers they service. Google’s DNS server then uses this information to decide where to tell the traffic to be routed. See http://www.caraytech.com/geodns/ for how this might work in BIND. I don’t know why they don’t use BGT to do this—though I suppose it’s possible they are. All I can say is that it does not seem to be working terribly well when it comes to load-balancing their traffic—I am not on RoadRunner but I often have trouble pulling down 480p without buffering, and I end up in the 74.125.0.0/16 area.



  • @snover said:

    Google’s CDN, like most distributed CDNs these days, almost certainly tries to connect you to the closest DC/cheapest transit by returning different DNS records based on your geographical location/time of day.

    Bingo.

     

    @snover said:

    I don’t know why they don’t use BGT to do this—though I suppose it’s possible they are.

    You mean BGP?  I'm sure they probably are, but geographical DNS is good, too.  It may be that the 208. server is located in one of RR's datacenters specifically for use by RR customers.  It may just be overloaded.  The real question is, why isn't he using Google DNS?



  • @tgape said:

    @Isuwen said:
    use the MAC spoofing feature of your router  

    It hasn't got one. :( 

    It's a Linksys WRT and it hasn't got one?

    Every Linksys WRT I've owned has one.  My current one calls it 'MAC Address Clone' instead of MAC spoofing.  I seem to recall the prior one called it something different, but I can't recall what it was.

    That having been said, I'm assuming that if it really doesn't have something as simple as MAC spoofing, it probably doesn't have a lot of things.  New router maybe?  I realize they're a bit old, but my WRT54G works very well for me.

    I don't get it. Why do you care about MAC address if the router gives you NAT? All packets going out have the same MAC address.


  • @RichinNJ said:

    @GoatCheez said:

     That sounds completely crazy. The DNS servers are only used to resolve an IP and they in no way impact actual bandwidth. The only thing they can impact is resolution speed. Once the IP is obtained the DNS servers don't matter at all. Can you take a video or screenshots? Are you sure your tests are identical in all other respects? It's.... just.... nuts.....

     

     

     But the point is that resolution speed ultimately throttles bandwidth by creating "dead air".  A reasonable page such as CNN.COM takes many DNS lookups. Bypassing the RR DNS servers seems to be making pages load a couple of seconds faster.  That couple of seconds is saved bandwidth.  Put a 50ms delay into each DNS lookup and the average user might view one or two fewer pages per hour.  That adds up.

     

    The issue being discussed at this point is how DNS resolution can affect streaming video. This takes one resolution. After this one resolution for the video server's IP, the DNS servers are not hit again. The reason the DNS servers appeared to throttle bandwidth was due to the fact that they resolved the name to two different IP addresses. This can obviously affect bandwidth.



  •  Aporopos of nothing, my preferred DNS IPs: 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6

     Put them in your router, on your Xbox, in your laptops-- watch DNS issues melt away as if by magic! (I think they belong either to Level 3 or Verizon, either way they perform awesomely and are never down.)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Aporopos of nothing, my preferred DNS IPs: 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6

     Put them in your router, on your Xbox, in your laptops-- watch DNS issues melt away as if by magic! (I think they belong either to Level 3 or Verizon, either way they perform awesomely and are never down.)

    I shall do that.  Much appreciated, sir!



  • @belgariontheking said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Aporopos of nothing, my preferred DNS IPs: 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6

     Put them in your router, on your Xbox, in your laptops-- watch DNS issues melt away as if by magic! (I think they belong either to Level 3 or Verizon, either way they perform awesomely and are never down.)

    I shall do that.  Much appreciated, sir!

     

    NP. They're also easy to remember and easy to type (which is important on Xbox.)



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @belgariontheking said:

    @blakeyrat said:

    Aporopos of nothing, my preferred DNS IPs: 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6

     Put them in your router, on your Xbox, in your laptops-- watch DNS issues melt away as if by magic! (I think they belong either to Level 3 or Verizon, either way they perform awesomely and are never down.)

    I shall do that.  Much appreciated, sir!

     

    NP. They're also easy to remember and easy to type (which is important on Xbox.)

    I used to use those, but recently switched to Google's public DNS servers (fucking Comcast hijacks not found DNS queries which fucks up scripts I have that check if a hostname exists or not).  They don't really seem any faster, but who knows?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    You mean BGP?
    Yes. Typing is hard.

    @blakeyrat said:

    Aporopos of nothing, my preferred DNS IPs: 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6
    I have heard some rumours that Level 3 is planning on blocking those DNS servers to non-L3 customers at some point in the not too distant future. Probably better to use 208.67.222.222/208.67.220.220 (OpenDNS), or risk discovering things suddenly don’t work anymore and being quite confused as to why.

    @morbiuswilters said:

    (fucking Comcast hijacks not found DNS queries which fucks up scripts I have that check if a hostname exists or not)
    You shouldn’t have to, but… https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @snover said:

    @blakeyrat said:
    Aporopos of nothing, my preferred DNS IPs: 4.2.2.1 through 4.2.2.6
    I have heard some rumours that Level 3 is planning on blocking those DNS servers to non-L3 customers at some point in the not too distant future. Probably better to use 208.67.222.222/208.67.220.220 (OpenDNS),
    Or, if you're (still) not bothered about the advertising model of serving public DNS, there's always the alternative Google's at 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 .



    Or mix-n-match.



  • @snover said:

    You shouldn’t have to, but… https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/

    I heard about an opt-out thing when this first came out, but IIRC it was just a cookie they set in the browser that caused it not to display the ad-laden landing page.  Maybe this actually sets you up with different DNS resolvers that don't respond to non-existant domain queries, but it's too much of a hassle to find out.  Google DNS just works.



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @snover said:

    You shouldn’t have to, but… https://dns-opt-out.comcast.net/

    I heard about an opt-out thing when this first came out, but IIRC it was just a cookie they set in the browser that caused it not to display the ad-laden landing page.  Maybe this actually sets you up with different DNS resolvers that don't respond to non-existant domain queries, but it's too much of a hassle to find out.  Google DNS just works.

     

    No. I have Comcast and used that opt-out page. After doing that, their DHCP started feeding my router different DNS servers. They have 2 sets of DNS servers, one with hijacking, one without.



  • I'm in the Austin area and have TW RR.  over the last 6 months or so I've been experiencing this issue and just assumed it was the area i was in...until i found this post.  i changed my DNS setting to the numbers in the screen shot and it's amazing how much of a difference there is!!!



  • @mcdonamw said:

    Under both scenarios, the video traffic is actually coming from v5.lscache8.l.google.com, on port 80.

    The interesting note: 

    RR DNS servers resolve this host to 74.125.7.92.

    DynDNS servers resolve this host to 208.117.248.220.

     

    How many IPs can that cache have?

    At home I get 74.125.109.92

    Let me do some sshing:

    At work I get 150.101.98.209

    Work's VPS gets 74.125.103.156

    Work's other VPS gets 74.125.103.28

    Even doing "dig v5.lscache8.l.google.com @8.8.8.8" got the same IPs as ISP-assigned DNS servers, however:

    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com
    150.101.98.209
    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @8.8.8.8
    150.101.98.209

    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @8.8.4.4

    150.101.98.209

    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @4.2.2.2
    208.117.252.220
    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @4.2.2.1
    74.125.11.220
    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @4.2.2.3
    74.125.11.220
    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @4.2.2.4
    208.117.248.220
    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @4.2.2.5
    74.125.11.220
    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @4.2.2.6
    208.117.248.220
    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @208.67.222.222
    208.117.252.220
    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @208.67.220.220
    208.117.252.220
    b@t:~$ dig +short v5.lscache8.l.google.com @61.88.88.88
    74.125.109.92

    CBF doing all these queries from all locations - these were all from work. So your DNS server can be important for CDN served content.



  • It's now March 2011 and the same crap is going on with Time Warner Road Runner in Southern California.  The DNS servers they are using, dns-cac-lb-01.rr.com  and dns-cac-lb-02.rr.com  have intermittent issues. One moment it will resolve Google.com; five seconds later, no dice! 

    After 6 hours of telephone time and live chat with Road Runner CS, at least one Level 3 guy believes me.  I had to point my DNS config to public DNS severs.  That was the fix.  I battled one Level 2 person for an hour, and she didn't even have clue one as to how DNS functioned.  Pure nightmare!  Need me some FIOS! 


  • Garbage Person

    8.8.8.8
    8.8.6.6

    ISP DNS servers are frequently made of total fail. Since Google doesn't publish IPv6 addresses for their DNS servers, I use Comcast's IPv6 servers. ... Which are typically down [i]at all times[/i] (despite being dedicated servers with only a few thosuand experimental users) - so I'm dependent on IPv4 for AAAA name resolution. It annoys the shit out of me.



  • I use 4.2.2.1 - 4.2.2.6. They belong either to Verizon or Level 3. (Probably Level 3.) Either way, they're fast as shit, and no authentication or filtering goes on. I've been using them for 6-7 years now with no hiccups.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I use 4.2.2.1 - 4.2.2.6. They belong either to Verizon or Level 3. (Probably Level 3.) Either way, they're fast as shit, and no authentication or filtering goes on. I've been using them for 6-7 years now with no hiccups.

    Thanks for the tip!  Those are faster than what I had picked out.  TW must be rebooting their primary DNS.  209.18.47.61 is not even pingable at the moment.


  • Garbage Person

    @blakeyrat said:

    I use 4.2.2.1 - 4.2.2.6. They belong either to Verizon or Level 3. (Probably Level 3.)
    Those are Level 3/GTEI.


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