Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA | reply to chsdgfsdg
Re: Comcast DNS Servers Lagging AGAIN
It matters if the path to it is misconfigured or congested and the path to other DNS servers isn't. |
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ryanmcv
join:2001-10-14
Lemont, IL
1 edit | quote:
It matters if the path to it is misconfigured or congested and the path to other DNS servers isn't.
Ding Ding! We have a winner! |
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Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA | ^ Yeah. You can have the fastest, most powerful and most responsive DNS server in the world but if you can't get to it, then what is the point? It's just talking to itself.  |
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Qumahlin
Never Enough Time
Premium,MVM
join:2001-10-05
united state
1 edit | reply to Blam
said by Blam  :It matters if the path to it is misconfigured or congested and the path to other DNS servers isn't. No it doesn't because the trace does not BEGIN until the DNS is resolved.
You can have the slowest, most underpowered DNS server in the world and your ping times to sites will remain the same because name resolution has nothing to do with response time other then the initial query and then the name queries of the hops your route takes.
So unless your tracert program is actually pausing it's operation while waiting for DNS lookup and adding it's pause time into your ping calculations a slow DNS server will have NO effect on ping times.
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Forum Posts:6500 |
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Big_D
Premium
join:2003-06-02
Augusta, GA | Thank you! |
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Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA
| reply to Qumahlin
Because this damn network is screwed up right now (and the routing problems in several areas have been acknowledged), it might be able to resolve at the beginning of the trace (or better, if one has the name/address cached locally, then it assumes it exists), but then ICMP packets have been dropped or hung up somwhere, trying to get to the DNS destination or often any other location for that matter. Like I said, the DNS can be the biggest fastest in the world but if you can't get to it consistently, because the pings go all over the place depending on the moment, it's useless.
This denial of the problems is why they never get resolved. |
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Big_D
Premium
join:2003-06-02
Augusta, GA
| You obviously don't understand how it works. I would suggest doing a little research before posting. ICMP packets do not go to the DNS server, they only go to the destination as requested by your traceroute or ping. If a DNS lookup is required, it is done before the ping or traceroute is attempted.
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You want the truth? You can't handle the truth! |
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Qumahlin
Never Enough Time
Premium,MVM
join:2001-10-05
united state
| reply to Blam
said by Blam :Like I said, the DNS can be the biggest fastest in the world but if you can't get to it consistently, because the pings go all over the place depending on the moment, it's useless. This denial of the problems is why they never get resolved. This has nothing to do with "denial" of a problem. Bottom line is a DNS server no matter how slow, flaky, broken has no effect on your ping times, nor your route to the host.
DNS is just what it's acronym stands for "Domain Name Server" It takes a Domain name and looks up it's Registered IP in order for your browser to contact the site. It will not effect the speed of your pings.
Yes a crappy DNS server will cause web browsing to be slower of course because your browser has to constantly wait for the DNS server to complete it's lookup so that the browser can have the IP to actually contact the site.
But irregardless of how long it takes the DNS server to complete the operation it does not factor into your ping time whatsoever
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Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA | reply to Big_D
You aren't understanding what I am saying either. One of the discussions here has to do with ping times to the destination machine. I would ask that you separate out the issues being discussed. |
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Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA
| reply to Qumahlin
I am talking about getting the information FROM the DNS, BACK to the requesting machine. It can have that answer in record time... But if that information gets lost while trying to get back to my machine, then there is a problem, don't you think? Having names/addresses cached locally helps in that instance, as I don't even have to make the request to an outside machine.
As I noted to Big_D - there are essentially 2 different issues being brought out in this thread. The machine itself and the routes to/from that machine. The DNS can blab blab blab and its blabbing goes nowhere. I can ask ask ask and never get a response - IF something is wrong with my pipe from here to there. |
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Qumahlin
Never Enough Time
Premium,MVM
join:2001-10-05
united state
3 edits | said by Blam :I am talking about getting the information FROM the DNS, BACK to the requesting machine. It can have that answer in record time... But if that information gets lost while trying to get back to my machine, then there is a problem, don't you think? Having names/addresses cached locally helps in that instance, as I don't even have to make the request to an outside machine. As I noted to Big_D - there are essentially 2 different issues being brought out in this thread. The machine itself and the routes to/from that machine. The DNS can blab blab blab and its blabbing goes nowhere. I can ask ask ask and never get a response - IF something is wrong with my pipe from here to there. I am addressing the issue of the OP saying that his ping times are lower when he uses the Level 3 servers, versus when he uses the Comcast servers.
Changing your DNS server might effect your web browsing speed, but it does not effect your ping times.
You say this "It matters if the path to it is misconfigured or congested and the path to other DNS servers isn't" You didn't reply to any specific post so one would think your statement is made to say that you are agreeing with the OP that by changing his DNS server he changed his ping times, which is wrong.
the statement of "It matters if the path to it is misconfigured or congested and the path to other DNS servers isn't" has no bearing on ping times other then the ping time to the DNS server which has nothing to do with the ping time to the site your running a ping/tracert to.
There is that clarified enough? The problem to begin with was that your statement caused the OP to believe that a congested DNS server or misconfigured path to the DNS server has anything to do with his ping time to other sites.
Hence his response of "ding ding we have a winner"
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Forum Posts:6500 |
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Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA
1 edit | In that particular case, is that not what an "average" user would like to see? Faster browsing times rather than timeouts? And those who know about the few rudimentary net tools who want to try to troubleshoot why they get web page timeouts and slow loading for almost every site (and yes, I know that some websites can be borked giving a slow response to http requests), will usually pull out the old ping/traceroute commands to see if those indicate something that might be amiss. Ie., if they can't ping the website name then they can go to step b, trying the address, and if they can't ping that, then chances are the problem may be local, etc., and they can go from there.
EDIT: Since you edited after I started replying. In reference to your edited-in statement:
You say this "It matters if the path to it is misconfigured or congested and the path to other DNS servers isn't" You didn't reply to any specific post so one would think your statement is made to say that you are agreeing with the OP that by changing his DNS server he changed his ping times, which is wrong. So who is this "no one" who supposedly doesn't understand what I am saying? It seems there are folks posting here who are getting the gist of what I am saying and have been basically saying similar for the past couple weeks in multiple posts here - something that has come to a crescendo over the past week. I am not trying to obfuscate the point like you seem to be doing.
When someone says "lagging", that is a terminology often used by gamers who often talk about games "lagging" and there is a whole subculture of the use of "ping" in order to determine how well your connection to a game server is. And "lags" often have to do with congestion somewhere between the gamer's machine and the game server. So yes, I am addressing this post in terms of the common use of the term "lagging". |
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Qumahlin
Never Enough Time
Premium,MVM
join:2001-10-05
united state
2 edits | said by Blam :In that particular case, is that not what an "average" user would like to see? Faster browsing times rather than timeouts? And those who know about the few rudimentary net tools who want to try to troubleshoot why they get web page timeouts and slow loading for almost every site (and yes, I know that some websites can be borked giving a slow response to http requests), will usually pull out the old ping/traceroute commands to see if those indicate something that might be amiss. Ie., if they can't ping the website name then they can go to step b, trying the address, and if they can't ping that, then chances are the problem may be local, etc., and they can go from there. That has nothing to do with the topic. We aren't talking about an average user and their troubleshooting steps. We aren't talking about site timeouts, we aren't talking about delayed responses.
We are talking about the OP who states clearly that they get faster ping times to comcast.net when they are using the level 3 DNS servers versus the Comcast DNS servers and then using this incorrect information to form the basis of a "well the Comcast DNS servers must clearly be lagging" when in reality the DNS server has NOTHING to do with their ping time.
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Forum Posts:6500 |
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Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA | Read my edited response to your edited response. |
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Qumahlin
Never Enough Time
Premium,MVM
join:2001-10-05
united state
1 edit | said by Blam :Read my edited response to your edited response. Bottom line is the poster has shown no evidence of the DNS server "lagging" in any way shape or form. If they'd like to post further information in relation to the DNS server lagging (Since nothing they've posted as of yet points to that) then fine.
My previous posts still stand, the DNS servers have nothing to do with the OP's ping times as he seems to think they do. That is the issue he posted, that is the issue I answered. the terminology of "lagging" has nothing to do with this other then the OP's misinterpretation of the data he is seeing
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Forum Posts:6500 |
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Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA
1 edit | said by Qumahlin :said by Blam :Read my edited response to your edited response. Bottom line is the poster has shown no evidence of the DNS server "lagging" in any way shape or form. If they'd like to post further information in relation to the DNS server lagging (Since nothing they've posted as of yet points to that) then fine. My previous posts still stand, the DNS servers have nothing to do with the OP's ping times as he seems to think they do You are still not understanding the subculture use of the term "lagging". As an example, I did a couple of traces using this site: »network-tools.com/
Where going from that site to the Denver name server, you get:
TraceRoute to 68.87.66.196 [ns.cmc.co.denver.comcast.net]
Hop (ms) (ms) (ms) IP Address Host name
1 3 0 3 66.98.244.1 gphou-66-98-244-1.ev1.net
2 2 0 0 66.98.241.4 gphou-66-98-241-4.ev1.net
3 0 0 0 66.98.240.6 gphou-66-98-240-6.ev1.net
4 1 1 1 129.250.10.229 ge-2-1-0.r02.hstntx01.us.bb.verio.net
5 10 10 10 129.250.5.100 p16-0-3-0.r21.dllstx09.us.bb.verio.net
6 213 254 212 129.250.9.38 p16-0.att.dllstx09.us.bb.verio.net
7 11 11 12 12.123.17.86 tbr2-p014001.dlstx.ip.att.net
8 60 60 63 12.122.12.126 gbr4-p30.dvmco.ip.att.net
9 59 59 60 12.122.1.42 -
10 59 59 60 12.123.36.149 gar3-p370.dvmco.ip.att.net
11 60 60 60 12.124.157.54 -
12 61 61 61 12.244.71.14 -
13 66 65 66 68.87.66.196 ns.cmc.co.denver.comcast.net
Now from someone casually looking at the above, you see pings of 1s, 5s, 10s, etc., from the intitiating location, and then suddenly it's as if it gets into the Comcast network and you have the steady 50s and 60s.
For folks who are gamers, the above would be considered a "lag", despite it being consistent throughout.
EDIT:
You edited again and how can you assume that the use of the terminology has nothing to do with anything? That is quite dismissive when you have folks who use terms in different ways and not being aware of those uses is why miscommunications happen. |
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Morty
Premium
join:2004-09-18
2 edits | reply to Blam
I think you, like many people on this forum are confusing unrelated problems with DNS. There's nothing wrong with the Comcast DNS servers, the entire united states using Comcast uses these servers, if there was an issue like there was last week, then you'd have another 30,000 people reading these posts. Now in your case, I have seen several posts from PA on this forum from people who appear to be having a DNS issue, however it's not, it would most likely be a routing issue to the DNS servers for your area. This does not mean there is a problem with the DNS or DNS servers. As if it were a problem with the DNS servers the entire nation would be affected. I'm questioning if it is even a routing issue to the server, as if this was the case you would still see more posts here about it. It could be something localized right to your market/area of PA It would take more troubleshooting to determine. |
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Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA
| It seems the dead horse is going to be beaten some more.
My comments have to do with the original poster's use of the term "lagging" and what that means to certain people in the internet community who are gamers and who will bemoan the fact that they are connected to a game server and their persona in the game suddenly "hangs" and when they can move again, they're "dead". And as a troubleshooting measure when this happens, most of the game software that has a corresponding ability to operate over a network, uses "ping" to indicate what the general network environment is like and whether there is congestion and latency. I have myself gamed online (UT), so I am aware of the usaage of that term to describe slowness, hangs, and disconnects.
And to assume that the entire Comcast subscribership knows about this place, let alone is willing to complain here or even bother calling up the Call Center... or even spends as much time on a computer as many of the posters here (who are obviously more clued into sites like this to post questions to and try to troubleshoot because it is part of their hobbies or jobs), is a bit disingenous. Many who are working spend more time on the computers at work doing surfing, emailing, etc., than at home and the worksite IT folks like myself, get the hits to keep everything running smoothly.
I have 2 sisters subscribed to Comcast HSI in 2 different counties from mine and each other and neither are on their machines as a hobby/job like I am. And because I've been involved in various distributed computing projects for the past 6 years, my network link "from here to there" is more important to me than their getting to email or browsing a few websites is to them, particularly since they can often do that kind of stuff at work during lunch, etc. And thus I wouldn't expect them to immediately find this place to post complaints to or call up Comcast if something has gone horribly wrong for them. They'll just turn off the machine and go do something else.
So to say that "no one else is complaining" is not telling you the whole picture, IMHO. |
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Blam
Penguin Power
Premium
join:2002-02-06
Philadelphia, PA
1 edit | Re: Comcast DNS Servers Lagging AGAIN
Just because the original poster didn't immediately respond back within some instant amount of time, then the thread should be locked? I guess that's like how Comcast closes tickets when a customer's problems still haven't been solved because the tech didn't know what else to do?
Threads like this are of interest to me regarding ancillary info that might get posted, considering that right at 1:18 pm, my connection went poof and I'm back on Verizon! Got about 8 hours worth of good connection and away it went.
Edit to clarify and count correctly: Only 6 hours of connection. From 7 am - ~1 pm. |
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