fedora-test-list Digest, Vol 17, Issue 37

[David G. Miller (aka DaveAtFraud)]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005 17:14:05 +0100 "Paul F. Johnson" 
<paul at all-the-johnsons.co.uk> wrote:

> Hi, My router is working fine and my broadband connection seems okay. 
> Problem is this. If I use firefox, getting pages can be hideously 
> slow. Trying to do an svn checkout is painful from a terminal window 
> and I am getting resolution problems when trying to do a yum update 
> (run out of mirrors error). If I try to ping I am getting 100% loss, 
> yet emails can come and go without a problem! Has any ideas what on 
> earth is going on? I'm using rawhide on a box last updated 2 days ago. 
> TTFN Paul
> -- "Some people will do anything for a woman in uniform" - The Doctor 
> - Unregenerate (Big Finish audio)

Check the route on your Linux box that is behaving strangely.  As a 
guess, the SMTP and IMAP/POP servers are set correctly (probably with an 
IP address) so the system can reach the mail server(s) which then has a 
valid route.  For stuff that the box must resolve directly, it's having 
a problem. 

Another possible culprit would be the nameserver for the Linux box.  If 
the nameserver has changed and there is an alternate, the Linux box will 
attempt to use the primary nameserver, wait for a timeout and then hit 
the alternate.  This has the effect of making it look like the network 
is slow when, in fact, it's just a lame nameserver.  This would still 
explain the e-mail behavior if the SMTP/IMAP/POP servers are specified 
with an IP address. 

The ping behavior is odd since it should just not be able to resolve the 
address of the box you're trying to ping which is a different error than 
getting packet loss.  Another tool to use to try to diagnose something 
like this is "traceroute".  The man page is excellent since it explains 
both how to use it and how to interpret the results.

Dave