What is the best way to diagnose slow initial web page loading?

[ahdaniels76]

I had a problem that went away and has come back and it's driving me crazy.

When I browse the internet it often takes 5-10 seconds for a web page to load. It's then quite fast if I click through links. Sites I've been to seem to be remembered as long as the browser is open, but new sites take a while to load (it says "connecting..." for a while then the page pops up).

I thought it was a DNS issue and switched from Comcast DNS to Google's DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) but that didn't seem to change anything.

I also disabled ipv6 on my network properties, but that didn't seem to help.

I also put a network address on my wireless adapter (one site suggested it might work), which seemed to work, but when I closed and re-opened Firefox web pages (even Google) were again very slow to load.

I flushed the DNS. No change.

I tried pinging sites (some, like www.google.com, seem to work quickly, while others like www.cnn.com seem to time out). Googling seems to indicate that simple pings may not be a good test, though, since some sites block them (DDoS defense?), so I'm a little unsure how to diagnose my problem.

I have high speed internet (Comcast cable modem) D/L at 35 Mb/s and 6 for U/L. Online games run great. Downloads are speedy. It's just that opening web pages is infuriating.

I've tried searching for answers, but most are regarding pages people are hosting. I'm just having trouble with general browsing and it seems linked to name resolution.

I can't point to anything I did that would have triggered it. It seems to have happened overnight.

Could someone point me in the right direction for how to diagnose whether this is a router problem (I've reset/rebooted etc.), a cable modem problem (I've rebooted it, reset it, had Comcast send a rest signal), a Windows 7 problem, a software/process problem (I am running MS Security Essentials), etc.?

This is driving me crazy, but probably one of the easier things to fix with a little know-how that I seem to be lacking. Do I need to "tracert" certain sites and post results?

Many thanks in advance.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Are you watching the individual page elements in your browser's "debug" or "developer" window?

Because it sounds an awful lot like it's failing to load a CSS file or something right away, and then once it gets it initially, it's pulling it from cache.

Since a lot of sites will use the same ad server, say, it could easily be a problem with an ad service that ends up effecting multiple sites and you just coincidentally hit a bunch in a row. (There was an ad service that got hacked a while back; about half of my daily-visits gave me malware warnings.)

 

[ahdaniels76]

I didn't know I could do that. I will try using a debug/developer window and see what I see.

 

[ahdaniels76]

hmm... how do I do that in Firefox?

 

[ahdaniels76]

hmm... I see how to do it in Chrome, I think (at work). Developer Tools -> "Network" tab. Looks like a ton of operations hit when you go to a new site, with status and timing/latency stats. I suppose that's a good start. I guess I'm looking for something with an error/timeout status or high latency. I'll check when I get home.

Thanks

 

[AnonymouseUser]

It may not be a problem on your end. Run a traceroute and see if one of the nodes is slow/times out. My guess is that the DNS lookup is hitting the slow node but the rest of your browsing isn't. One way to verify this would be use the IP address of the website directly and see if there is any delay.

 

[MontyAC]

Check your MTU value, might be set too high and getting dropped packets.

http://www.dslreports.com/faq/695

 

[ahdaniels76]

I'll check MTU, too, thanks.

For AnonymouseUser, I'm not sure how to use traceroute, but will look it up. I think that if I use a numerical IP (vs. words) I don't have problems, so I'm pretty sure I have DNS related issue. I'm not sure if traceroute will do anything other than confirm that, but I'll try it out.

 

[gsaldivar]

One of the easiest tests you can do is to take your router out of the loop, and connect your computer directly to the modem. If you still have problems, swap out the modem and check the computer for issues.

 

[ahdaniels76]

problem is my cable in, modem, and router are all in the basement and I don't want to drag my bulky PC box all the way down there if I can help it. But I suppose I might have to.

Now that I think about it, I don't believe my wife is having any trouble using her work PC on the network, so I it's most probably a PC issue on my end.

 

[cantholdanymore]

Not sure from your post if this is happening with firefox and chrome or only firefox(?)
You may want to try a second browser

 

[ahdaniels76]

I had tried explorer and had same issue last time this happened

 

[gsaldivar]

problem is my cable in, modem, and router are all in the basement and I don't want to drag my bulky PC box all the way down there if I can help it.

If you have an Ethernet cable already running between the basement and your desk, that's all you need. Just use it to run a direct connection between the computer and the modem.

 

[ahdaniels76]

Turns out switching to Chrome seemed to solve it. If I turn ipv6 back on and stop using the Google DNS, things slow down a little, but the key things seems to be the browser.

The debug for Firefox was giving me a lot of 30-150ms issues with page content interpretation (html/xtml errors), and I think they were compounding.