waiting for....

[#1]

Sometimes (actually quite a lot of times) it seems to take ages to get to a site. All I get is "waiting for....." whatever site I'm trying to access. Here for example is one (an american site BTW)  http://www.cnczone.com/forums/. I used to be able to get onto this immediately but now I can wait two or three minutes and sometimes it just times out alltogether. This is just one example - there are loads - and yet some sites are as quick as you like.
OK so I'm sure you're thinking it's the site's problem - and you may well be right. The thing is I've been in touch with a few people round the UK who also use these sites regularly and they have no similar problems. I have to say this has only happened since I a) joined plusnet and b) switched to firefox from IE. So.....
Any ideas anyone? - is it the site?, plusnet?, firefox? me? Any ideas welcome.

[#2]

Try changing your DNS settings to "8.8.4.4" and "208.67.222.222"

[#3]

Tried in IE8 abd Firefox - slow but not unreasonable - and my primary DNS is 8.8.8.8

[#4]

Oh yes, and it took five seconds to load on Firefox.
I can't tell you which DNS my system actually used as my server uses many DNS's at the same time, but uses the one that returns a result quickest !.

[#5]

set dns as suggested and there appears to be some improvement. I'll watch it for a few days because as I said *sometimes* it's ok anyway.
Thanks all for your help. I'll get back after a few days with a morre meaningful update.
Cheers

[#6]

I just tried your example URL again, and the site is found almost immediately but the homepage is currently taking about six seconds to load, which suggests the site server is a little slow.
Whereas your original report of taking minutes is more likely to be DNS related, or you happen to be looking at the pages when the web-server is particularly heavily loaded.

[#7]

Hi all,
We're not aware of any issues with any of our transit providers so I would agree that this is either server (unlikely as the hosts don't seem to thing it its) or DNS related.

[#8]

Thanks both for your comments. I have to say things have been better today but as I said I'll monitor it over a week or so and get back. I honestly don't think it's a site issue because as I said originally I've been in touch with a few fellow (UK) users and they don't  have any problems. That said ONE fellow user has reported similar problems and is currently going through the same process as me trying to find the root cause.
Just for the whatever, here's a quote from him: (BTW he's NOT a plusnet customer)

Quote

There are so many problems with my connection it is taking quite sometime to figure out this problem. Of course it does not help when blame is shifted between ISP, BT and BT wholesale.

I'll keep my mouth shut....

[#9]

Quote from: whistler

Sometimes (actually quite a lot of times) it seems to take ages to get to a site. All I get is "waiting for....." whatever site I'm trying to access. Here for example is one (an american site BTW)  http://www.cnczone.com/forums/. I used to be able to get onto this immediately but now I can wait two or three minutes and sometimes it just times out alltogether. This is just one example - there are loads - and yet some sites are as quick as you like. OK so I'm sure you're thinking it's the site's problem - and you may well be right. The thing is I've been in touch with a few people round the UK who also use these sites regularly and they have no similar problems. I have to say this has only happened since I a) joined plusnet and b) switched to firefox from IE. So..... Any ideas anyone? - is it the site?, plusnet?, firefox? me? Any ideas welcome.

I'm using Firefox version 3.6.8 and Primary DNS 156.154.70.1 and the website above opens in around 15 seconds using the maaf / PN connection via the lo1.thn-ag04.plus.net gateway.

Pinging www.cnczone.com [69.16.243.61] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 69.16.243.61: bytes=32 time=147ms TTL=51
Reply from 69.16.243.61: bytes=32 time=147ms TTL=51
Reply from 69.16.243.61: bytes=32 time=147ms TTL=51
Reply from 69.16.243.61: bytes=32 time=146ms TTL=51
Ping statistics for 69.16.243.61:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 146ms, Maximum = 147ms, Average = 146ms

[#10]

just opened in 8 seconds for me

[#11]

Took about 8 seconds from the office here too but looked to load normally, post back if there are still any issues and we'll get investigating but we're not aware of anything specific.

[#12]

OK - I'd say things have been generally better since I did as advised re DNS. BUT - this morning, although I get to my example site above within about 8 to 10 seconds, if I then choose a sub-forum it's back to the behaviour I was getting before. It takes an age and then finally displays a blank screen with "Done" in the status bar of firefox. This HAS to be a site issue doesn't it?
EDIT: 20 minutes later and everything's flying....  WT[Censored]?
[My own note: Thought I'd save the mods the trouble   :P]

[#13]

Well I have just spent a couple of minutes clicking around the CNCzone site and am finding everything loads within a second or so, including the forums.

[#14]

I'm wondering whether you have and RWIN or MTU setting wrong somewhere, as other people on this forum have found getting those correctly set fixes slow browsing speeds on many other sites.
So you could hit the SEARCH tab at the top of this page, and see what other people have said and done with their RWIN and MTU values.
There is a  "Guide To RWIN & MTU"  at  http://community.plus.net/library/settings/guide-to-rwin-mtu/, then carefully follow the instructions.

[#15]

@purleigh - Thanks but from the time stamp of your post it looks like you were browsing at more or less the same time as I added my edit where as I said, everything was fine. 20 minutes earlier was hopeless. As I've said - since the DNS thing - it's been generally better - in fact perfectly acceptable all round bar one or two sites.
Also - thanks for the RWIN MTU suggestion - but been there - done that - and according to DSLreports I'm fine.
I'm really now of the view that it's the sites that have issues - sometimes fine but sometimes dead slow - but as we know - very few admins are prepared to even consider that they might have any issues - more often than not it's "someone elses" fault.