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Why do certain web sites load slowly from our office?

  • There are certain web sites (e.g. http://www.amd.com) which load incredibly slowly from our office. On the same laptops from anywhere else they load fine. What gives? Problem: Most (80/90%?) web sites load fine. Some, such as amd.com and this http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/may/1430402400/helen-garner/insults-age link from the blue, will load eventually but take 2 or 3 minutes! (I've tried IE, Chrome & Firefox.) Background: Our office is small (6 people) and the problem occurs even if I'm the only one in the office. Internet provider is Comcast -- whom I've contacted and cannot see a problem -- with a fairly fast connection. Speedtest.net just showed 66Mbps / 23Mbps (down/up). DNS: I don't think it's a DNS issue since ping, tracert, nslookup tend to return the same IP whether I'm in the office, at home or elsewhere. (I can also ping etc. from the Comcast gateway's utility and it has the same results.) Also, we have a couple of web pages we load using an IP rather than name and these are slow too. Firewall: We have a Sonicwall installed. I don't want to poke around in this -- although I could. Our remote IT department administer this. They are currently at a lost too. Likely relevant: I noticed two scenarios where we don't see this issue: 1. I run Windows 7 and we are all on the same domain. If I run an old XP, logged on locally since it is no longer on our corporate domain -- it does not have the problem. 2. Phones or tablets on the same wifi network do not suffer the same issue. Both of these make me think that there is some issue with our domain somehow? But now I'm getting out of my knowledge comfort zone. (Other offices on our WAN don't have the issue. E.g. I can open a 2X desktop and access all these sites with ease.) Helps!

  • Answer:

    Other things to check on the SonicWall are Security Services (Content Filter, Gateway AV, App Control, etc) or firewall rules (with QoS) applied to just some devices instead of all devices on the network. Getting different addresses from nslookup doesn't necessarily indicate a problem, although it means you connected to a different instance / server. Both of those IPs (2 comments up) resolve to Akamai which is a CDN, so getting different IPs is to be expected based on your location (as determined by your IP and DNS generally). Simply connecting at a different time would connect you to a different IP as they are obviously using a CDN which effectively is a load balancer (so the site is hosted at multiple IPs). Traceroute would be a better tool, as this could be a problem with the ISP. If you can identify a domain on amd.com for ads, scripts, images etc that is causing the slowdown a traceroute of that may indicate the problem.

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Two rules of thumb for network problems:Blame DNSBlame the firewallGlad we figured out which it was. The fact that it may have been MTU related is like icing on the cake.

Nelson

Nelson, great questions & additional information -- thank you! Our IT team and I spent some time on this morning, we think we've now resolved it: (1) SonicWall is 5.9.x. (Re. ridogi's concern -- so yes, we're on one of the later, more problematic releases.) (2) On the SonicWall, Interface MTU was set to fragment non-VPN packets large than 1404. We don't know why, now cleared. (3) Also on SonicWall, we saw that various items that should be updated (antivirus, intrusion prevention etc.) are showing as last updated in 2014 -- even when we click to update and it appeared to be successful. Very strange. (4) Are you absolutely sure you bypassed the Sonicwall? Yes but no. I patched straight into the back of the gateway. But we just realized that I'm still -- somehow -- going through it. We have two gateways, something to do with the video conferencing and there must be some shenanigans there. I don't know what exactly yet, but clearly I wasn't. Sorry for that red herring. Conclusion: IT just managed to get the SonicWall anti-virus to properly, properly update. And it's FIXED. I can load amd.com (for whatever reason) in Thanks everyone for all your kind help. Thanks for helping me learn about Chrome's tools and more besides. Other than helping my occasional browsing you've made my colleague who uses a remote app very, very happy. Things have been so difficult for her and they're now fixed.1>

NailsTheCat

It could still be a DNS issue, if the problem sites are loading resources from another domain. If it was happening to me I'd look at the load times of the problem sites in the web inspector. In Chrome, open Developer Tools (right-click anywhere, "Inspect Element") and click on the Network tab, then tick "Disable cache" and reload the page. You'll see the loading times for each element on the page, which might give a hint where exactly the problem is.

neckro23

red herring Par for the course. Don't think I've ever had to diagnose a network issue that wasn't liberally provided with them. There are just so many ways for networks to do things other than what you assume they're doing, which is why I'm so grateful for tools like tcpdump and wireshark. And even drawing conclusions based on those requires extreme care, especially if you've been using any form of capture filtering. Networking is hard. I've never even once seen an antivirus product make it easier.

flabdablet

When you go to a website, it likely causes dozens and sometimes hundreds of DNS lookups to other domains as part of advertising, social media buttons, analytics, off-server fonts, images, JavaScript files, etc. It may be that your Active Directory DNS server(s) are slow or non-responsive in querying the root domain servers for new domain names, if it doesn't have DNS forwarders enabled. If the AD DNS server has forwarders enabled, it may be that the forwarders you're using are slow or out of date. In addition, my experience is that AD DNS gets cranky if it only has one server. This isn't wrong, but I've had to periodically restart DNS services in those cases. Like jaffa said, change the DNS servers on your local PC to be Google's and try again. If that works, have your consultants restart the DNS service on your AD server. They should also check the Sonicwall to make sure it's not getting in the way of DNS queries.

cnc

OK - saw what you wrote. Confirm that your Windows 7 machines have the same DNS server, subnet mask, a similar IP address and the same default gateway as your XP machine and tablets/phones. I wonder if the AD machines are configured differently or are using a separate path from the other devices on the network. If the AD machines are taking a different network path, it might explain the differences. Also, if you're using VPN inside the office, either on your PC or between servers/devices/sites to connect to your home office, mention that as well.

cnc

Tell me about your Java updates...

hal_c_on

SonicWall OS 5.8.1.15 is solid but 5.8.4.x and 5.9.x.x cause all sorts of browsing slowdowns.

ridogi

At home now. amd.com loads in a second. I get different DNS results now. C:\nslookup www.amd.com OFFICE Server: google-public-dns-a.google.com Address: 8.8.8.8 Non-authoritative answer: Name: e2897.b.akamaiedge.net Address: 23.4.152.20 Aliases: www.amd.com dsa-www.amd.com.edgekey.net dsa-www.amd.com.edgekey.net.globalredir.akadns.net HOME Server: router.asus.com Address: 192.168.1.1 Non-authoritative answer: Name: e2897.b.akamaiedge.net Address: 184.30.11.218 Aliases: www.amd.com dsa-www.amd.com.edgekey.net dsa-www.amd.com.edgekey.net.globalredir.akadns.net So DNS is perhaps the culprit as you've indicated.

NailsTheCat

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