[Sussex] Slow Internet

[Vic]

> Now, some explanation on BIND is going to be helpful here as I will try
> anything.

BIND is the Berkely Internet Name Daemon. It is one of the standard DNS
servers, used everywhere. You can get it from http://www.isc.org/sw/bind/
- but most distributions will have a package readily available. It might
be called "bind", "bind9" or "named", depending on who built the
package...

If you're just going to use it as a resolver, you probably only have to
start it (chkconfig or similar). If you want to publish DNS information
for your own domains - or use your server to prevent DNS lookups for
domains you do not wish to reach - I strongly recommend the use of a
graphical tool like Webmin to show you how to do it the first time.

BIND9 has the concept of "views" - so, for example, the machines on your
LAN can get one set of records for a domain, whilst anyone outside gets
something completely different. This is really useful if you have your
server behind a NAT router; you can issue internal IP addresses for
internal queries, and your public IP address for external ones.

But if all you want to do is to do your own resolution, I wouldn't worry
too much about that. Just make sure you can make outgoing connections to
port 53 (both TCP *and* UDP).

> I have two users on the same exchange (020 8647) using talktalk and they
> have similar problems, other users of talktalk have no problems.

I keep hearing of people with problems on TalkTalk. I have no first-hand
experience of them, but they don't currently have the best of
reputations...

Still - installing BIND can only help :-)

> The strange thing is that the modem diagnostics give a clean bill of
> health, but the access to the internet is very flakey. I have learned
> that the MTU must be reduced. Talktalk gave a figure of 1400 while
> searching on google I find that 1430 might be right. The default is 1500.

1400 will do fine for now; 1430 won't make much difference from a
performance point of view, but if TT have routers that will only take 1400
max, trying 1430 will give you intermittent connections. I'd stick with
1400...

Vic.