Something is wrong with my LAN

[lozina]

I have Verizon FIOS service at home and am facing some mysterious network issues which I believe are related to DNS.

Some symptoms of the problem are as follows:

1) I use Chrome now, and when I access web sites I often see it lag a bit at first with an empty gray screen and the text "Resolving host..." at bottom left before page starts to quickly show up on screen.

2) Oftentimes the page does not load completely - I will basically see what the web page would look like without any style sheets or javascript. I would then have to hit Refresh and then it always loads perfectly second time.

3) Also often, the page does not load at all. Chrome will say "Oops! Google Chrome could not find www.whatever" Then I hit Refresh and the page loads up instantly.

Note: This affects ALL the PCs on my network... be it desktop or laptop, Windows XP, 7 or 8.

Deciding it is a DNS issue I took a look at my router which is a Linksys 8-port VPN router and I guess since I use PPPoE for authentication with Verizon FIOS service there is no place to edit the DNS servers there. Even though I do see some listed on the status screen. I can only edit DNS for "WAN 2" which is not utilized.

I then went into my desktop's Network configuration under Control Panel and explicitly provided DNS servers there, plugging in Google's public DNS servers. I provided the right IPs for both the IPv4 and IPv6 settings. I rebooted and it made absolutely no difference.

What else can I try? Am I barking up the wrong tree thinking it is DNS? Could this have anything to do with me not using the router Verizon provided to me and instead using my Linksys router???

One thing I am a bit perplexed on is, I am pretty sure I can connect a laptop directly to the Ethernet output of my Verizon FIOS OTN box - which feeds my network from the fiber. And I am pretty sure when I do so, I do not need to authenticate anything, so then why do I have the PPPoE settings on my router... Think I will go and play around with that now

 

[JackMDS]

Call Verizon support.

 

[avos]

Most likely not a dns issue if you manually set the dns on the pc and it didn't make a difference. Your computer doesn't do a dns request to the router if you specified another server for it to use.

A great test for this is a tool called dig. It is like windows nslookup, but it will give you the response time as well so you can see if responses are taking awhile.

Nslookup will at least show you what your dns is returning.

Generally when I see symptoms of what you are seeing I look for malware.

 

[Mushkins]

My first reaction was "PPPoE for fios? what?"

FiOS is authenticated on the service level via DHCP, you do not have a login. PPPoE is typically used for things like dial-up/dsl where you need to provide credentials every time you connect. On that note, this sounds like an authentication issue. Change PPPoE to Auto or DHCP and i'm pretty sure this is going to clear right up.