Sluggish Spark DNS servers?

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Darquel

43 posts

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#167417 12-Mar-2015 19:43

I'm on VDSL in East Auckland and I've noticed the Spark DNS servers have been considerably sluggish on a lot of the websites I visit, what's up with that? Does anyone know or have similar experiences that I have?

I've since swapped to google's DNS servers for now, which has given me a smoother browsing experience.

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#1288828 21-Apr-2015 22:00

I'm going to bump this one.

I have been experiencing terrible internet for a while now. I initially put it down to being in the infamous Outran, however it seems to be Spark's DNS servers at fault. Changing to Google's servers has fixed my problem, but it's really not a long term fix.

Anyone else experiencing similar issues?

BuzzLightyear

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#1288833 21-Apr-2015 22:14

Yes had the same last week and changed to google DNS in the end

Talkiet

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#1288865 21-Apr-2015 23:15

I'll check the reporting on the servers in the morning. Do you have any metrics recorded or just a feeling of "slow"?

Cheers -N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

andrewNZ

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#1288891 22-Apr-2015 06:58

Recorded metrics no. But its definitely not just a feeling.

What I get is constant "connection" type problems. Page mot found, check "www.google.com is correct and try again. The DNS just doesn't seem to respond about 20% of the time (as a guess). When it does pages load fast enough.
All sites are affected, including geekzone.

Changing to Google's DNS makes the problem vanish.

If you want some specific data you can post/pm instructions. It'll have to be evenings or weekends though.

Jase2985

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#1288892 22-Apr-2015 07:02

Talkiet: I'll check the reporting on the servers in the morning. Do you have any metrics recorded or just a feeling of "slow"?

Cheers -N

how do you get such metrics?

Batman

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#1288893 22-Apr-2015 07:11

is there any disadvantages using google DNS instead of spark's?

andrewNZ

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#1288894 22-Apr-2015 07:13

My internet browsing goes a bit like this.

Happy, happy, happy, nothing works, happy, happy, happy, nothing works, happy, nothing works, nothing works, happy, happy, happy.

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timmmay

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#1288896 22-Apr-2015 07:15

joker97: is there any disadvantages using google DNS instead of spark's?

You don't get to use Spark/NZ caches for CDN nodes, you go to wherever Google sends you, so things can be slower.

Batman

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#1288922 22-Apr-2015 08:22

andrewNZ: My internet browsing goes a bit like this.

Happy, happy, happy, nothing works, happy, happy, happy, nothing works, happy, nothing works, nothing works, happy, happy, happy.

Same here. Thing is, when i can be bothered to restart my huawei modem, it works again. Is that Still dns then?

michaelmurfy

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#1288927 22-Apr-2015 08:38

You sure it isn't related to the Proxy problems?

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Jase2985

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#1288932 22-Apr-2015 08:52

michaelmurfy: You sure it isn't related to the Proxy problems?

but then how do you tell if thats the issue?

muppet

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#1288939 22-Apr-2015 09:13

Jase2985:
Talkiet: I'll check the reporting on the servers in the morning. Do you have any metrics recorded or just a feeling of "slow"?

Cheers -N

how do you get such metrics?

Something like Smokeping or Cacti, usually.

There's a plugin for Smokeping that'd do it, for example.

I run SmokePing (not sending DNS probes, just ICMP/Ping) against a bunch of hosts from home, so I can moan to my ISP if performance goes terrible.
For example, here's Smokeping running towards the 2Talk SIP Server. You can see something happened in November to shave off ~8ms of latency.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

Talkiet

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#1288985 22-Apr-2015 09:53

Based on DNS loads (which even at peak have several hundred percent headroom) and active testing from one of our platforms, the DNS servers experienced no issues for the last 48 hours (The tests from ADSL and Fibre show the same pattern, as do the graphs over the last 7 and 14 days)

The reason that there are some high values is we have some probes testing deliberately to DNS servers that are further away than the primary that the network assigns. The spikes in response time for a couple of the sites are indicators of minor chorus congestion in a couple of locations.

We'd need a much better description of the issue and we'd need it logged to the helpdesk before we can help further.

Cheers -N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Jase2985

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#1288997 22-Apr-2015 10:05

can you inform us how we can test this to be able to provide you with data?

muppet

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#1289007 22-Apr-2015 10:21

Jase2985: can you inform us how we can test this to be able to provide you with data?

If you're a Windows user, something like this might be of assistance.

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