Slow loading of some sites

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1

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Expected Behaviour:

consistent loading times, increased over pihole being disabled

Actual Behaviour:

Some sites slow

Debug Token:

psa6srvz85

Hi,

I've got pi-hole set up and it's generally working fine, it's blocking ads.
I have the situation where some pages either take a long time to load (30 seconds to 1 minute) with a blank screen while it connects, or the loading spinner continues to spin once the page has loaded. I also have some pages that load with broken images which are later replaced. Reloading the page is often very quick.

An example of a page that takes a minute to load: Chord Electronics ☆ Poly ☆ (wireless & microSD module for Mojo) ☆★►USEFUL INFO on 1st PAGE!!◄★☆ | Page 593 | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org

I've read through other similar threads and applied things like the routing table updates etc. but that hasn't helped. I'm sure it's something I've misconfigured. Any help would be appreciated.

My setup is that I have google home wifi with the IP of pi-hole set as the primary DNS server. Google is set as the backup (8.8.8.8). The problem is consistent across devices and disappears when pi-hole is disabled. My Pi-hole Pi is also running JRiver and a spotify connect client, but they're inactive most of the time. Their usage doesn't correlate with the issue. I'll be moving pi-hole onto its own pi shortly.

I haven't done anything with the IPv6, which I'm guessing could be the cause.

If anyone can provide any thoughts as to what's wrong, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

Conrad

2

Have you checked this post?

I tried opening it on my network and it pulled up in less than 1 second.

The pi-hole that responded to the DNS request (on my side) is running on IPV4 only and uses Cloudfare DNS for upstream.

3

Yes, I think I did all that. I certainly added the values to the ip tables and saved them. I found a script that added the IPv6 address too, although I think I’m ipv4 only as well.

4

You're saying that you are using the Pi-Hole as your primary DNS and google as your secondary.

Sometimes your secondary DNS responds to the DNS queries and it bypasses the Pi-hole.

Do you see any traffic going on through the Pi-hole at all?

can you run nslookup flurry.com on one of your clients?

also nslookup head-fi.org ?

What is the output ?

What is the output of those commands on the Pi-hole hosting device?

See if you remove the secondary DNS (the google one) if anything goes out.

5

Yes, pi-hole is the primary (by IP) and google is the secondary, correct.

I've tried removing the secondary DNS but that didn't make any difference. I did it just now and also restarted the mesh network for good measure, and of course now I can't recreate the issue. I've reintroduced it and it's still not doing it.

I see traffic going through the pi-hole when the pages are slow and when they load they have no ads.

conrads-air:~ conrad$ nslookup flurry.com
Server: 192.168.86.1
Address: 192.168.86.1#53

Name: flurry.com
Address: 192.168.86.86

conrads-air:~ conrad$ nslookup head-fi.org
Server: 192.168.86.1
Address: 192.168.86.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: head-fi.org
Address: 35.190.24.194

They're the two nslookup commands from a client.
And from the pi-hole itself:

pi@Office:~ $ nslookup flurry.com
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

Name: flurry.com
Address: 192.168.86.86

pi@Office:~ $ nslookup head-fi.org
Server: 127.0.0.1
Address: 127.0.0.1#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: head-fi.org
Address: 35.190.24.194

I wasn't expecting such a fast level of help, I have to head off now. I'll be back tomorrow evening, I'll let you know if the problem persists then. If there's anything else I can provide, logs, config files etc, or commands I can run, let me know.

6

Try bypassing your router (on a client) and go straight to 192.168.86.86 as your DNS server.

Right now, your request is router from your client, to the router, to the Pi-hole and back.

Let's cut out the "middle man" and see if you experience the same lag when running the query straight to the pi-hole.

Also, for testing purposes, use only the Pi-hole IP as your DNS.

1 Like
7

thank you. In true debugging fashion, the slowness seems to have stopped.
I'll bear your suggestions in mind and try them first next time I see the issue. I'll open a new thread if it comes back and I don't make any progress with communicating directly with pi-hole.

Thanks for you help

8

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