[SOLVED] Greetings... and DNS issues... (why is it so slow?)

Question

Hey everybody!
My name is Stephen. I'm new to Arch (hence I'm posting in the newb forum). A bit of background: I'm a CS major in the good 'ole US of A. I used Debian/Ubuntu for 2 years before now. I actually installed Arch just yesterday, so today is my second day of usage. Why do I want to switch from Ubuntu? Several reasons, but they can all be summed up thusly: I want to tinker with and understand how my machine works. I don't want to interface with a blackbox that just "works." Arch seems to be geared towards what I want.
And I've been learning alot, haha. Which I why I am now here to ask for help.
I originally installed Arch at school. Everything was great. Then I took my laptop home and I found out something was wrong. Pacman took an extra 5-15 secs before each download started, but once the download started, I got normal speeds. I observed a similar behavior in my web browsers I tried (Firefox/Surf). No matter what I do, this behavior persists. I suspect this is a DNS issue, and thus I have tried the follow methods of correction so far.
1) Reinstalling to a default configuration.
2) Disabling IPV6.
3) Screwing around with etc/hosts, etc/resolv.conf, and etc/dhcpcd.conf (though I probably did something wrong. Also, I'm not sure how to force Arch to accept my changes after modifying these files.)
I also read somewhere that using HTTP mirrors works better for pacman, but I already was using an HTTP mirror anyway, so I knew that couldn't be the problem.
I have not tried DNS caching yet. However, given that every other machine in the house runs fine, I suspect it is my configuration that is wrong. Does anybody know how I can pinpoint this as DNS for sure? And if so, how I can fix it? Thanks for all your time/help!
Here are some config files/snippets of interest. Most of this should be straight from a basic Arch install.
etc/resolv.conf
# Generated by dhcpcd from eth0
# /etc/resolv.conf.head can replace this line
domain domain.actdsltmp
nameserver 192.168.0.1
nameserver 216.165.129.157
# /etc/resolv.conf.tail can replace this line
Note that 192.168.0.1 is the address of my router on my LAN. I believe the second address is a DNS provided by my ISP.
etc/hosts
#<ip-address> <hostname.domain.org> <hostname>
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost moebius
::1 localhost.localdomain localhost
etc/rc.conf snippet
HOSTNAME="moebius"
eth0="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(eth0)
# Routes to start at boot-up (in this order)
# Declare each route then list in ROUTES
# - prefix an entry in ROUTES with a ! to disable it
gateway="default gw 192.168.0.1"
ROUTES=(!gateway)
Last edited by sskeirik (2011-03-14 23:21:19)

Answer 1

Output of 'dig google.com a'
; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> google.com a
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 52741
;; flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; WARNING: recursion requested but not available
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com. 10000 IN A 74.125.65.104
;; Query time: 17 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.0.1#53(192.168.0.1)
;; WHEN: Mon Mar 14 14:09:45 2011
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 44
Output of 'dig @8.8.8.8 google.com a'
; <<>> DiG 9.7.3 <<>> @8.8.8.8 google.com a
; (1 server found)
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 43373
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 6, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com. IN A
;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com. 229 IN A 74.125.45.105
google.com. 229 IN A 74.125.45.99
google.com. 229 IN A 74.125.45.103
google.com. 229 IN A 74.125.45.147
google.com. 229 IN A 74.125.45.106
google.com. 229 IN A 74.125.45.104
;; Query time: 74 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Mon Mar 14 14:10:37 2011
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 124