Getting a delay with my internet (however my speed and ping are normal)

Question

I've been having some delay issues with my internet connection. It's hard to explain exactly what the issue is, but I can give a few examples. Also it does this with or without my router connected.

-If I try to go to any website, my browser will sit with the loading wheel seemingly doing nothing for about 10-30sec, then the page loads at full speed.

-If I go to YouTube, after about 10-30sec of staring at a white screen, everything except the video previews load, there still white squares (but they do eventually load). Then when I go to play a video, it takes between, 10-30sec for the video to start, but once it starts it almost immediately buffers all the way through at full speed. BUT, yep there's more, about 10-20sec after the video starts it gets paused so the commercial can play...the commercial that should have played before the video ever started.

I have 20Mb/s Down, and 2Mb/s Up, during the day I actually get closer to 30Mb/s Down and 1.7Mb/s Up, then in the evening I get about 18Mb/s Down, and 1.5Mb/s Up.

The only reason my ping test is a B is because It cant test packet loss because I don't have java, I ran the ping test on a Windows computer on the same network, and it was an A and packet loss was at 0%.

Also

    ping -c 4 google.com
PING google.com (74.125.45.105) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from yx-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.45.105): icmp_req=1 ttl=51 time=33.3 ms
64 bytes from yx-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.45.105): icmp_req=2 ttl=51 time=27.5 ms
64 bytes from yx-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.45.105): icmp_req=3 ttl=51 time=29.1 ms
64 bytes from yx-in-f105.1e100.net (74.125.45.105): icmp_req=4 ttl=51 time=29.4 ms

--- google.com ping statistics --- 
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 27.563/29.873/33.335/2.127 ms

Also, here is a link to a Kubuntu user with what sounds like the exact same issue, unfortunately the work around mentioned in the tread didn't really help me.

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3106289.0

INFO: Ubuntu 11.10 64bit ASRock M3A770DE mobo W/Realtek RTL8111DL on board NIC

Solution

Ok, I believe I solved the issue. A few days ago in an attempt to fix sharing issues with samba I modified the file /etc/nsswitch.conf I added wins before dns on the line that normally reads hosts: files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns mdns4 so now my internet seems to be back to normal speed, even though when I ping for example askubuntu.com it still takes 3000ms round trip.

And of course removing wins from the file made my samba shares break again.

Comments

[tumbleweed]

Slow DNS resolution? How quickly does host google.com respond?

[rlemon]

which browser is this.. I had massive problems with FF loading animations (flash, canvas, CSS3) and hanging for a long time before anything would happen. I switched to Chrome and problem solved (although Chrome has it's own set of problems). I know this doesn't solve the problem but might help identify it.

[Admin]

askubuntu.com/questions/22750/best-way-to-set-up-dns-caching‌​/…

[Relik]

@tumbleweed I'm not sure if you wanted me to put that in a terminal or not. But I did anyway, and also tried my browser, google.com loads almost instantly, probably because most of its layout is cached in my system. So I tried yahoo.com it was 40sec before anything at all came up on the screen, and at 45sec it was finished loading. I also tried dailymotion.com, it began loading after only 6sec, but didn't finish until 57sec. I'm very confused, every other computer in my home is just ridiculously fast. Also rlemon, I'm using Chromium, but have also tried FF.

[tumbleweed]

@Relik: Yes I did. We debug this kind of thing with simple tools, not browsers, they have way too many moving parts.

[Serhii Popov]

Setup the correct DNS lookup helped me, go here to check step by step solution.

[Relik]

Both of the name servers responded fine I think. (4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3004ms) and the other (4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3003ms)

[tumbleweed]

@Relik: 3 seconds round-trip is very very slow for a DNS server. Also, don't ping it, look something up, with host