Topic 'No meter from Comcast, can I exceed the cap?' in forum 'Comcast HSI' - dslreports.com

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Tue, 19 May 2009 14:09:24 EDT

NormanS posted : I've been running a couple of DNS benchmark tools. I've been testing against my own ISP (AT&T Internet Services), Level 3, OpenDNS, and some new kid on the block. All but the "new kid" use Anycast.

ATTIS - Pleasanton, California
Level 3 - San José, California
OpenDNS - Palo Alto, California
"New Kid" - San Francisco, California

Part of this is dependent on my provider's network architecture. DSL link from modem to DSLAM, ATM link from DSLAM to aggregation router (gateway). IP link the rest of the way. ATTIS puts my DNS servers right at the Pleasanton POP center, so all of my DNS requests get to Pleasanton first. If they are destined for the ATTIS DNS servers, they are processed right there; but, if they are destined for the off-network DNS servers, they get forwarded to those respective networks before being processed. So the ATTIS DNS servers usually get a slight advantage, for me.

Part may be that I am on a Tier 2 transit network. The distinction between Tier 1 and Tier 2 is that Tier 1 sells transit, but does not buy transit, while Tier 2 buys transit. I've seen discussions in other provider forums, here at DSLR, about who is the provider's "upstream provider"; nearly as I can tell, my ISP (at&t Yahoo! HSI, former SBC Yahoo! DSL Service) has no "upstream provider". They have their own transit network, "AT&T Internet Services" (formerly, "SBC Internet Services"). So going to 'cdn1.eyewonder.com' from an ATTIS, or OpenDNS lookup routes me very local, through NTT transit:

05/19/09 10:41:18 Slow traceroute 204.2.133.33Trace 204.2.133.33 ...192.168.0.1     RTT:   0ms TTL:170 (suzuka.aosake.net ok)68.127.107.254  RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (adsl-68-127-107-254.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net ok)64.164.107.1    RTT:   8ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)69.220.8.95     RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)151.164.191.66  RTT:  11ms TTL:170 (ex1-p10-0.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net ok)129.250.8.93    RTT: 194ms TTL:170 (xe-3-3.r02.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net ok)204.2.133.33    RTT:  11ms TTL: 58 (No rDNS)

While going to the same place on a Level 3 DNS server routes me through Level 3 transit:

05/19/09 10:41:57 Slow traceroute 8.18.65.64Trace 8.18.65.64 ...192.168.0.1     RTT:   0ms TTL:170 (suzuka.aosake.net ok)68.127.107.254  RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (adsl-68-127-107-254.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net ok)76.246.22.130   RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)151.164.93.231  RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (bb1-g15-0.pltnca.sbcglobal.net ok)69.220.8.41     RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)151.164.250.138 RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (asn3356-level3.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net ok)4.68.18.75      RTT:  11ms TTL:170 (ae-11-79.car1.SanJose2.Level3.net ok)8.18.65.64      RTT:  10ms TTL: 57 (No rDNS)

So I have to yield to espaeth on his description of DNS in general. But I appear to be a "special case"; of being on a well connected, Tier 2 network, in an area with beaucoup data connections.

BTW, lookups using the four network DNS servers I've been benchmarking:

C:\Documents and Settings\User>nslookup cdn1.eyewonder.com 68.94.156.1Server:  dnsr1.sbcglobal.netAddress:  68.94.156.1 Non-authoritative answer:Name:    a1956.g.akamai.netAddresses:  204.2.133.33, 204.2.133.49Aliases:  cdn1.eyewonder.com, cdn1.eyewonder.com.edgesuite.net C:\Documents and Settings\User>nslookup cdn1.eyewonder.com 4.2.2.1Server:  vnsc-pri.sys.gtei.netAddress:  4.2.2.1 Non-authoritative answer:Name:    a1956.g.akamai.netAddresses:  8.18.65.64, 8.18.65.24Aliases:  cdn1.eyewonder.com, cdn1.eyewonder.com.edgesuite.net C:\Documents and Settings\User>nslookup cdn1.eyewonder.com 208.67.222.222Server:  resolver1.opendns.comAddress:  208.67.222.222 Non-authoritative answer:Name:    a1956.g.akamai.netAddresses:  204.2.160.35, 204.2.160.248Aliases:  cdn1.eyewonder.com, cdn1.eyewonder.com.edgesuite.net C:\Documents and Settings\User>nslookup cdn1.eyewonder.com 204.194.232.200DNS request timed out.    timeout was 2 seconds.*** Can't find server name for address 204.194.232.200: Timed outServer:  UnKnownAddress:  204.194.232.200 Non-authoritative answer:Name:    a1956.g.akamai.netAddresses:  204.2.160.248, 204.2.160.35Aliases:  cdn1.eyewonder.com, cdn1.eyewonder.com.edgesuite.net

I guess the moral of this is, if you want to be well connected to the Internet, you need to live where the transit providers connect, and use a well connected Internet provider.

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Tue, 19 May 2009 12:06:26 EDT

JohnInSJ posted :

said by jhaygood86:

NormanS:

Try these 2 servers.

I'm using openDNS, but openDNS and comcast's DNS (nearly) agree on cdn.eyewonder.com

Edit: San Jose so OpenDNS being in Palo Alto is a wash for me vs Comcas's DNS.

$ nslookup  cdn.eyewonder.comServer:127.0.0.1Address:127.0.0.1#53 Non-authoritative answer:cdn.eyewonder.comcanonical name = eyewond.vo.llnwd.net.Name:eyewond.vo.llnwd.netAddress: 208.111.148.7Name:eyewond.vo.llnwd.netAddress: 208.111.148.6 $ nslookup   cdn.eyewonder.com 68.87.76.178Server:68.87.76.178Address:68.87.76.178#53 Non-authoritative answer:cdn.eyewonder.comcanonical name = eyewond.vo.llnwd.net.Name:eyewond.vo.llnwd.netAddress: 208.111.148.6Name:eyewond.vo.llnwd.netAddress: 208.111.148.7

Traceroute to either is more or less identical - well, the comcast ip is one hop more, but hey

OpenDNS

$ traceroute cdn.eyewonder.comtraceroute to cdn.eyewonder.com (208.111.148.6), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1  * * * 2  te-2-1-ur10.sanjose.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.85.190.213)  15.914 ms  16.098 ms  17.579 ms 3  te-8-4-ur05.sanjose.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.226.66)  15.902 ms  15.929 ms  17.450 ms 4  te-9-1-ur06.sanjose.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.192.54)  15.937 ms  17.978 ms  18.040 ms 5  be-40-ar01.oakland.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.226.229)  18.705 ms  18.737 ms  19.231 ms 6  pos-0-5-0-0-cr01.sacramento.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.90.137)  19.302 ms  12.713 ms  19.547 ms 7  pos-0-9-0-0-cr01.sanjose.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.181)  21.648 ms  21.676 ms  21.725 ms 8  TenGigabitEthernet3-1.ar1.snv2.gblx.net (64.214.174.109)  22.408 ms  22.386 ms  21.882 ms 9  Limelight.te1-2.ar1.snv2.gblx.net (64.212.32.186)  20.283 ms  19.687 ms  20.266 ms10  cdn-208-111-148-6.sjc.llnw.net (208.111.148.6)  19.627 ms  19.600 ms  33.806 ms

Comcast

$ traceroute  208.111.148.7traceroute to 208.111.148.7 (208.111.148.7), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets 1  * * * 2  te-2-1-ur10.sanjose.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.85.190.213)  15.768 ms  15.868 ms  16.748 ms 3  te-8-4-ur05.sanjose.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.226.66)  15.761 ms  17.444 ms  18.026 ms 4  te-9-1-ur06.sanjose.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.192.54)  16.538 ms  17.444 ms  18.018 ms 5  be-40-ar01.oakland.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.226.229)  18.469 ms  18.529 ms  18.990 ms 6  pos-0-6-0-0-cr01.sacramento.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.91.225)  19.039 ms  12.354 ms  19.181 ms 7  pos-0-9-0-0-cr01.sanjose.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.181)  21.287 ms  20.522 ms  20.484 ms 8  TenGigabitEthernet7-2.ar1.snv2.gblx.net (207.138.144.161)  19.771 ms  20.614 ms  21.394 ms 9  Limelight.te1-2.ar1.snv2.gblx.net (64.212.32.186)  20.065 ms  20.235 ms  20.228 ms10  ve5.fr4.sjc.llnw.net (69.28.171.210)  18.909 ms  20.570 ms  17.970 ms11  cdn-208-111-148-7.sjc.llnw.net (208.111.148.7)  39.787 ms  39.113 ms  38.966 ms

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Tue, 19 May 2009 10:00:04 EDT

jhaygood86 posted : Here's some traces from Comcast Atlanta:

C:\Users\Justin Haygood>tracert cdn1.eyewonder.com Tracing route to a1956.g.akamai.net [96.17.146.113]over a maximum of 30 hops:   1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  DD-WRT [192.168.2.1]  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.  3     9 ms     8 ms     8 ms  68.85.172.245  4     8 ms     8 ms     9 ms  te-0-8-0-0-crs01.B0atlanta.ga.atlanta.comcast.net [68.86.107.45]  5    10 ms     8 ms    11 ms  pos-1-3-0-0-cr01.atlanta.ga.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.90.125]  6    23 ms    23 ms    23 ms  pos-0-6-0-0-cr01.miami.fl.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.86.65]  7    23 ms    23 ms    23 ms  a96-17-146-113.deploy.akamaitechnologies.com [96.17.146.113] Trace complete.

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Tue, 19 May 2009 09:56:51 EDT

jhaygood86 posted : NormanS:

Try these 2 servers. Both are CDN distributed servers. If DNS is working correctly, it should pick one a few hops from you at most, and never go over a transit provider except for at most 1 hop.

Akamai: cdn1.eyewonder.com
Limelight: cdn.eyewonder.com

Here's some more that might be on a transit provider, but might not be. They should still be pretty close to you.

Akamai Streaming Video: fms2.eyewonder.speedera.net
Limelight Streaming Video: eyewond.fcod.llnwd.net

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Tue, 19 May 2009 04:54:08 EDT

NormanS posted :

said by espaeth:

Global Traffic Managers are complex beasts -- they can take a full BGP routing table to return the best response based on the best network path to the server doing the querying. The problem with using the Level(3) servers is for CDN purposes it's going to return the IP of the server cluster with the best path back to Level(3) -- which may be completely different than the best path back to your ISP.

From me to Level 3 based on the location of the DNS server I use? I don't know. Does Google count as a CDN? I never get a route to Google through Level 3, even when using Level 3 DNS servers. Same with Yahoo!. Here are some Yahoo! results:

C:\Documents and Settings\User>nslookup www.yahoo.com 68.94.156.1Server:  dnsr1.sbcglobal.netAddress:  68.94.156.1 Non-authoritative answer:Name:    www-real.wa1.b.yahoo.comAddress:  209.131.36.158Aliases:  www.yahoo.com, www.wa1.b.yahoo.com C:\Documents and Settings\User>nslookup www.yahoo.com 4.2.2.1Server:  vnsc-pri.sys.gtei.netAddress:  4.2.2.1 Non-authoritative answer:Name:    www-real.wa1.b.yahoo.comAddress:  209.131.36.158Aliases:  www.yahoo.com, www.wa1.b.yahoo.com C:\Documents and Settings\User>nslookup www.yahoo.com 208.67.222.222Server:  resolver1.opendns.comAddress:  208.67.222.222 Non-authoritative answer:Name:    www-real.wa1.b.yahoo.comAddress:  209.131.36.158Aliases:  www.yahoo.com, www.wa1.b.yahoo.com

And the trace route:

05/19/09 01:47:33 Slow traceroute 209.131.36.158Trace 209.131.36.158 ...192.168.0.1     RTT:   0ms TTL:170 (suzuka.aosake.net ok)68.127.107.254  RTT:  11ms TTL:170 (adsl-68-127-107-254.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net ok)64.164.107.1    RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)151.164.42.100  RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (bb1-10g2-0.pltnca.sbcglobal.net ok)151.164.190.14  RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (ex1-p9-1.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net ok)151.164.248.58  RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (asn10310-yahoo-10g.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net ok)216.115.107.83  RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (ae0-p171.msr2.sp1.yahoo.com ok)209.131.32.23   RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (te-9-1.bas-a2.sp1.yahoo.com ok)209.131.36.158  RTT:  10ms TTL: 56 (f1.www.vip.sp1.yahoo.com ok)

ATTIS also goes direct to Google, no matter which DNS server I use. How would I test a CDN route?

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Tue, 19 May 2009 04:37:24 EDT

beerbum posted : I'm sorry, I just do not understand how and why people have such a difficult time with DNS.

I use 68.87.96.3 , 68.87.96.4 , 68.87.64.146 , and 68.87.75.194 and never had problems with DNS resolution -

I have had a problem free DNS setup and running with those IP's since 2001-2002..

Maybe it has to do with me shutting off the DNS service that comes with Vista and XP ?

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Tue, 19 May 2009 02:32:48 EDT

espaeth posted :

said by NormanS:

Level 3 DNS servers are less centralized than OpenDNS.

I expect that there are, just on the U.S. West Coast, Level 3 DNS server farms in Seattle, Washington, and Los Angeles, California, as well as the one located very close to me, in San José, California.

They may be close to you, but that doesn't mean it's going to be beneficial for CDN performance.

Global Traffic Managers are complex beasts -- they can take a full BGP routing table to return the best response based on the best network path to the server doing the querying. The problem with using the Level(3) servers is for CDN purposes it's going to return the IP of the server cluster with the best path back to Level(3) -- which may be completely different than the best path back to your ISP.

CDN load balancing works best when the DNS server doing the querying originates from the same BGP ASN, or ideally the same netblock advertisement as you.

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Mon, 18 May 2009 16:07:40 EDT

NormanS posted : If your location is truly Aurora, Colorado, it is odds on whether OpenDNS is taking you to their Midwest servers (Chicago, Illinois), or Far West servers (either San José, California, or Seattle, Washington). I suspect you'd be better off using Level 3 (I think they have a data hub in Denver, Colorado; if so, their 4.2.2.x DNS servers will be closer to you than the OpenDNS servers).

Why not run a trace route to one of each? 4.2.2.1 and 208.67.222.222.

In my case, DNS server traces are:

05/18/09 13:00:02 Slow traceroute 68.94.156.1Trace 68.94.156.1 ...192.168.0.1     RTT:   0ms TTL:170 (suzuka.aosake.net ok)68.127.107.254  RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (adsl-68-127-107-254.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net ok)76.246.22.1     RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)69.220.8.95     RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)64.164.97.225   RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (srvr3-vlan30.pltnca.sbcglobal.net ok)68.94.156.1     RTT:   9ms TTL:250 (dnsr1.sbcglobal.net ok)

For AT&T Internet Services, for my ISP (where 'pltnca' is Pleasanton, California, the location of my POP center and aggregation router; the 'gateway').

05/18/09 12:58:41 Slow traceroute 4.2.2.1Trace 4.2.2.1 ...192.168.0.1     RTT:   0ms TTL:170 (suzuka.aosake.net ok)68.127.107.254  RTT:  11ms TTL:170 (adsl-68-127-107-254.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net ok)64.164.107.1    RTT:   8ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)151.164.93.229  RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)151.164.94.47   RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (ex2-p12-0.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net ok)151.164.251.246 RTT:  32ms TTL:170 (asn3356-level3.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net ok)4.68.18.62      RTT:  21ms TTL:170 (vlan69.csw1.SanJose1.Level3.net ok)4.68.123.6      RTT:  11ms TTL:170 (ge-10-0.core1.SanJose1.Level3.net ok)4.2.2.1         RTT:  10ms TTL: 56 (vnsc-pri.sys.gtei.net probable bogus rDNS: No DNS)

For Level 3 (which identies as located in San José, California).

05/18/09 12:59:25 Slow traceroute 208.67.222.222Trace 208.67.222.222 ...192.168.0.1     RTT:   0ms TTL:170 (suzuka.aosake.net ok)68.127.107.254  RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (adsl-68-127-107-254.dsl.pltn13.pacbell.net ok)64.164.107.1    RTT:   8ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)69.220.8.95     RTT:   9ms TTL:170 (No rDNS)151.164.191.201 RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (ex1-p9-0.eqsjca.sbcglobal.net ok)129.250.8.93    RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (xe-3-3.r02.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net ok)129.250.3.225   RTT:  10ms TTL:170 (ae-2.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.gin.ntt.net ok)129.250.5.32    RTT:  11ms TTL:170 (ae-1.r21.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net ok)129.250.4.122   RTT:  11ms TTL:170 (xe-4-1.r04.plalca01.us.bb.gin.ntt.net ok)140.174.21.166  RTT:  12ms TTL:170 (ge-2-3.r04.plalca01.us.ce.gin.ntt.net ok)208.67.222.222  RTT:  11ms TTL: 54 (resolver1.opendns.com ok)

For OpenDNS (where 'plalca' is Palo Alto, California).

All three are very close to me, and should work well, interchangeably. But, if I were living in Las Vegas, Nevada, my ATTIS DNS servers would trace to the ATTIS POP center closest to Las Vegas, Level 3 would trace to Los Angeles, California, but OpenDNS would probably still trace to Palo Alto, California, as they do for me. Of those three, then, the ATTIS DNS servers would actually be preferable, especially for CDN content access, such as YouTube, where your geographic location is very important to CND delivery.

--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Mon, 18 May 2009 15:52:42 EDT

NormanS posted : Level 3 DNS servers are less centralized than OpenDNS. Though both use "Anycast" technology, Level 3 appears to maintain there DNS servers in their regional data hubs, of which they have more than OpenDNS (only five OpenDNS locations in the U.S.)

I expect that there are, just on the U.S. West Coast, Level 3 DNS server farms in Seattle, Washington, and Los Angeles, California, as well as the one located very close to me, in San José, California.
--
Norman
~Oh Lord, why have you come
~To Konnyu, with the Lion and the Drum

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Mon, 18 May 2009 12:46:16 EDT

espaeth posted :

said by JohnInSJ:

In other words, DNS load balancing isn't effective anymore. Maybe in 2000, but not now.

Actually, I think DNS-based load balancing is quite effective. In most cases people are using their ISP's DNS servers which are distributed enough to match up with CDN / distributed infrastructure.

I've personally had a great deal of success with the DNS-based F5 Global Traffic Manager platform for splitting traffic across our distributed portals and directing employees to the nearest VPN concentrator. (As a large healthcare provider we have distributed US VPN concentrators along with a couple strategic foreign concentrators)

said by JohnInSJ:

Far better to to ip load balancing so you can optimize on the requesters IP.

Sure, but how do you make that work?

You want to go to www.google.com -- you do a DNS lookup, you get an IP. That's the only point at which the initial connection can be balanced, is when the IP is handed back to your client. The only way to load balance after that is to do redirects for applications that support it. For example, you go to »www.google.com and get directed to »www-usa.kenosa.wi.a01.a13.google.com so that you connect to the closest server. This creates a couple problems:

•It now ties your connection to a single non-balanced hostname, so any bookmarks you create will be tied to that specific box. If that server crashes, you experience an outage, or if the box is retired all of your bookmarks quit working.

•It complicates the heck out of SSL. You start off going to »banking.mybank.com , and end up getting directed to »some-long-obfuscated-prefix.serv···bank.com. SSL certs need to be maintained for every single server you could be directed to, adding cost and complexity.

said by JohnInSJ:

Frankly if OpenDNS makes a service perform badly, that service is broken.

I don't know if I quite agree here. DNS is designed to be distributed at its core; it is hierarchical by design, so the centralized OpenDNS model actually is in contrast to the overall design philosophy. I would argue the real problem is that many ISPs have done such a poor job managing their DNS resolvers that a service like OpenDNS has gained such popularity. If everybody did things the "best" way, there would be no need for a service like OpenDNS to exist.

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Mon, 18 May 2009 11:40:17 EDT

JohnInSJ posted :

said by espaeth:

DNS-based load balancing works by handing out responses based on the IP of the query source.

In other words, DNS load balancing isn't effective anymore. Maybe in 2000, but not now.

Far better to to ip load balancing so you can optimize on the requesters IP.

Frankly if OpenDNS makes a service perform badly, that service is broken.

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Mon, 18 May 2009 11:33:41 EDT

funchords posted : Thanks for that explanation, espaeth! (You're one of the best!) That's quite likely what is happening.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- District of Columbia -- KJ7RL

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Mon, 18 May 2009 11:30:44 EDT

espaeth posted :

said by funchords:

I could understand why one would be faster than the other, but the degree of the problems being seen makes me wonder about the actual health of whatever was at the other end.

Centralized DNS ends up pooling a large number of clients to a small selection of servers.

DNS-based load balancing works by handing out responses based on the IP of the query source. The problem is that your PC isn't doing the query -- you're relying on an intermediate DNS resolver to do the query for you. That means Google, YouTube, Akamai, etc will hand out an IP based on the source IP of the DNS server querying them -- which may be a poor choice for a client several AS hops away. For instance, OpenDNS IP address space may have direct connectivity to AS 174 (Cogent), while the end-user may have to hand off through 2-3 congested peering points to reach AS174. If Google's DNS servers hand out an IP directly connected to AS174 based on the server's query source IP, that could lead to incredibly poor performance.

said by funchords:

The magic of CDNs is better speed and efficiency. But even if it was a server half a world away, it shouldn't halt like that. Something was probably wrong with that distant box.

It's most likely source overloading. OpenDNS caches DNS responses from upstream servers and hands them out to a lot of people. The result of many end-users converging on a few servers tends to work out poorly.

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Fri, 15 May 2009 10:07:50 EDT

funchords posted : I could understand why one would be faster than the other, but the degree of the problems being seen makes me wonder about the actual health of whatever was at the other end.

The magic of CDNs is better speed and efficiency. But even if it was a server half a world away, it shouldn't halt like that. Something was probably wrong with that distant box.
--
Robb Topolski -= funchords.com =- District of Columbia -- KJ7RL

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Thu, 14 May 2009 18:49:07 EDT

jlivingood posted :

said by Cjaiceman:

Good to know, I tried both openDNS and Comcast DNS servers and actually got slower loading times for the videos on Comcast's DNS server. When using OpenDNS I could watch any video in HD and it would start right away and not buffer at all. Comcast's DNS it would buffer for 2-3 seconds, play and did buffer a few times during playing of several video's. The guy in the article is also on Qwest so that could have something to do with it...

That doesn't really make any sense. I'd love to see you lookup several CDN-hosted FQDNs and post the A records you get from each DNS server here, and they do a traceroute to each of them.
--
JL
Comcast

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Thu, 14 May 2009 18:47:20 EDT

jlivingood posted :

said by espaeth:

said by Cjaiceman:

Yea, Comcast's DNS servers are pretty hit or miss. I personally like OpenDNS and use them, another one to use is 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 :)

Keep in mind that using centralized DNS like OpenDNS or Level(3)'s open resolvers can lead to unexpected issues, such as performance problems on sites that rely on DNS-based geographic load balancing.

»consumerist.com/5244884/mystery-···ustomers

That appears to be the case for most any CDN-based content.
--
JL
Comcast

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Mon, 11 May 2009 18:48:27 EDT

Cjaiceman posted : Good to know, I tried both openDNS and Comcast DNS servers and actually got slower loading times for the videos on Comcast's DNS server. When using OpenDNS I could watch any video in HD and it would start right away and not buffer at all. Comcast's DNS it would buffer for 2-3 seconds, play and did buffer a few times during playing of several video's. The guy in the article is also on Qwest so that could have something to do with it...
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Duct tape is like The Force – it has a light side and a dark side, and it binds the Universe together

Re: [DNS] DNS Servers

Mon, 11 May 2009 12:01:22 EDT

espaeth posted :

said by Cjaiceman:

Yea, Comcast's DNS servers are pretty hit or miss. I personally like OpenDNS and use them, another one to use is 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 :)

[DNS] DNS Servers

Sun, 10 May 2009 01:08:15 EDT

Cjaiceman posted : This subtopic was split from the bandwidth topic, started as a reply to this comment:

said by Lord Fish:

Edit: It looks like it was a DNS problem. I manually entered some different DNS servers into my router, and everything appears to be working fine now.

Yea, Comcast's DNS servers are pretty hit or miss. I personally like OpenDNS and use them, another one to use is 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 :)
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Duct tape is like The Force – it has a light side and a dark side, and it binds the Universe together