Waiting for google.com

Question

I'll be the first to admit I'm not an expert at administering a home network. I'm a software engineer by trade so my expertise lies in code operations, not networking or administration. I'm having an issue with certain domains. Any time I use anything Google related, whether it's search, email, Drive, I constantly get "Waiting for <subdomain>.google.com..." for like 2 minutes and then finally loads. This happens for all browsers and from multiple computers.

Just a logistical rundown on my setup: I have two networks at play, one for my office devices and another for our home devices. The home network is the one closest to the internet (192.168.0.*), this network is the WAN for the office network (10.0.0.*). On the office network I have an AD and naturally a DNS, and a couple of computers that are members of that domain.

On the home network, Google loads fine; I've isolated it to the office network. I suspect a DNS issue on the AD but I don't know enough about it to troubleshoot.

My office devices all use fixed IP's and DNS pointing to IP of the AD computer, with a secondary set to point to the router. The AD itself just points to the router. The router itself is set to automatic and naturally points to the home network's router.

Side note, I think (I can't remember since I tried countless amounts of things to fix it) I received better results when I bypassed the AD's DNS (on office client machines) and went straight to the router, but then I couldn't access any of devices by name, I could only access by IP.

I find it strange that it's only Google's web services that give me problems. Every once and awhile I find some other domains that do the same thing but I hardly notice it for sites I don't use all the time, unlike Google. But randomly, by an act of God, Google might, just might, load at normal speed, but it's a rare act. It really is quite sporadic. I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas.

Answer 1

It's been a long time coming but it came down to it being a faulty router. I had a separate issue where half my forwarded ports wouldn't stay forwarded for longer than 24 hours, very weird. I reset the router to factory settings and manually put some of the settings back (minimal change from default), but the same issues existed. I got a new router same make/model, no issues.

Answer 2

I understand your problem.

I had this problem also, it is happening because of your internet provider.

I think your internet provider is using some kind of Proxy or some kind of Virtual Private Network in your internet connection. So, google is thinking you are not in your current location, you are anywhere else, and you area a customer from those place. So google is providing service for those place.

If you contact with your service provider, it will be fixed.

Another thing may happen, you are using a software which is force you to use Proxy or VPN in your PC. It also may cause this problem.

Answer 3

From a command prompt on one of the office systems that is experiencing the problem, type nslookup. Then at the nslookup prompt, type mail.google.com. You should see something like the following:

C:\>nslookup
Default Server:  localhost
Address:  ::1

> mail.google.com
Server:  localhost
Address:  ::1

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:    googlemail.l.google.com
Addresses:  2607:f8b0:4004:806::1015
          74.125.228.246
          74.125.228.245
Aliases:  mail.google.com

>

Are the results of the DNS query displayed immediately or do you experience the same delay you noted? If there is a delay, do you see the same delay with www.cisco.com, apple.com, or some other domain name that you haven't tried to access recently, so there isn't likely to be a cached entry for it? If you wanted to know the exact amount of time it took for particular DNS queries to be answered, you could use DNSQuerySniffer from NirSoft; it will show you the time it took for the response in milliseconds.

In the example above the default server is "localhost", because I ran the command on a Microsoft Windows server that is functioning as a DNS server for the systems on the LAN. And that is the server that responded as shown by "Server: localhost" after I submitted the mail.google.com query. The default server you see should be your DNS server on the LAN based on what you posted. Is it the IP of the AD computer you configured as the DNS server? And that server is configured to use the office router, which is also functioning as a DNS server, as a DNS forwarder? You could try setting the DNS forwarder the Windows server uses to be the IP address of the home router rather than the office router to see if the problem is within the office router.