Firefox 3 Slower than IE 7: DNS Caching Issue? Solution: TreeWalk?

Update: Using TreeWalk didn't fix the issue. After trying many, many, different things, I was unable to get Firefox 3 to load pages as fast as IE7 on my friend's Windows XP SP3 machine.

I am hoping to try installing TreeWalk DNS on my friends Windows XP machine to see if I can fix problems with Firefox 3 often taking much longer to load websites than Internet Explorer 7 on the same box. Quite often, the Gmail login page would take a minute to load in Firefox and 3 seconds in Internet Explorer.

I think it may be a DNS issue:

• [TWC]Treewalk-What a difference! DNS slow? Solved!: "I saw a thread a few days ago about slow DNS service with RR, and believed I have the same issues. I've tried a number of different DNS servers throughout RR, but none of them do a decent job for me.
  
  
  
  Someone posted a suggestion to use a program called "TreeWalk", so I gave it a shot. Treewalk is a relatively small DNS server that runs on your PC. Looks like it takes about 5 megs of RAM.
  
  
  
  I downloaded it, installed, and rebooted. NO CONFIG was necessary. The thing just worked without messing with it.
  
  
  
  My DNS resolution and web page display is AWESOME now. Before using Treewalk, I could easily count to 7-10 seconds at times (evenings are particularly bad) before a web page like Yahoo.com would load. -- With Treewalk enabled? The page pops up INSTANTLY. Now I can hardly count to 2-3 before web pages POP up. The difference is night and day.
  
  
  
  It's easy to repeat the tests, as you can shut off/on the Treewalk service program, and try loading up a web page (after manually flushing WinXP's cache, of course.)
  
  
  
  I realize there's another thread talking about what DNS server to try for RR, but I gotta tell you, Treewalk is THE solution."



• Speed up your browsing by setting up a local DNS cache

  : "I'm fed up with my ISP's (BSNL) slow DNS servers. It takes 4-5 seconds just to look up a site, which is annoying because it happens every time I click on a link. So I decided to set-up a local cache of DNS look-ups to skip the process and save time. A little bit of searching and I discovered what I was looking for - TreeWalk."


• "1) slow networks/dns servers: if you find that your browser status message spends a lot of time "Finding xyx.com" then increasing this timeout as well as network.dnsCacheEntries will help where your computer will remember more name to ip address resolutions." (Firefox and network.dnsCacheExpiration config)

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  "TreeWalk DNS "is a Domain Name Server program which fetches and converts Web Site human readable names into the numbered addresses your computer needs so that your browser, email, icq, and ftp programs can surf the Web. For Microsoft Windows® XP /2000 /.NET /2003 workstations or servers." This really sped up my Road Runner cable modem browsing when the Road Runner DNS servers were so slow." (http://www.mccune.cc/Software.htm)



• How to speed up FireFox: "I also run my own DNS (Treewalk) and do not rely on my ISP's DNS so I have hardly ever any problems with sites loading."
  
  


• http://www.ukparentslounge.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=86&t=77263


• Local DNS Cache for Faster Browsing



• Slow DNS Resolution: "With the bad DNS servers sympatico gave me my initial DNS time for a request was 7 to 10 seconds - so amazingly slow when you consider the transfer of the document itself was only 0.17s. Once it's cached locally, the dns time is only 0.101, so all said and done the total request now takes 0.359s instead of 10s. Much better."


• Re: Firefox to slow for me: "FF is fast. do you have DNS problems?
  
  I have noticed a notable speed improvement when installing a local DNS cache."


• Possible Solution to all your DNS troubles


• Hutch Report: Tweaking Treewalk DNS For Windows XP/FireFox: "If you ever have problems with your cable company resolving DNS look ups or you just want to speed up the loading of pages on the Internet – then Treewalk is for you."


• Firefox not finding websites on first attempt • mozillaZine Forums: "I installed treewalk instead of flusing my DNS cahce through windows, works like a charm as the site that was giving me the most trouble has stopped giving me any errors, give it a shot if you want."
  
  


• Bug 453403 – add DNS pre-fetching to Necko and Firefox


• I want to try OpenDNS again also (it didn't seem to really help, but maybe with TreeWalk it would):
  
  



• Summary of Can't Connect/timeout Solutions



• "II. DNS lookup fails. Most of the instances of Fx failing to load a webpage that can't be attributed to a misconfigured firewall are probably due to a failure by the ISP's DNS nameservers to resolve the hostname that one wishes to access. This could be caused by actual failure or misconfiguration or overloading of your ISP's DNS nameserver. When such a failure is intermittent, overloading of the server is a likely cause. Many broadband providers have experienced such intermittent failures lately. Examples are OptimumOnline, Verizon, Comcast, RCN, Roadrunner. Perhaps too many people have been signing up for broadband lately, and ISP's are running out of DNS server capacity. "
  
  


• "Rather than using your ISP's DNS nameservers, use stable, reliable and non-congested alternative nameservers"

• Firefox uses different DNS settings than IE:



• "Firefox caches DNS lookups for 1 minute"


• "Internet Explorer caches DNS lookups for 30 minutes by default"


• developer.yahoo.com/performance/rules.html


• Increase FF caching to 30 minutes by following Simple Firefox DNS Hacks To Boost Performance seemed to help, but it seems that new windows and restarting FF made problem reappear. Also, I think the DNS cache is cleared on browser restart so hopefully TreeWalk will fix that.
  
  

Here's the list of what I'd like to try on my Friends PC to see if I can fix this issue:

• I would like to try using OpenDNS with TreeWalk DNS: [OOL] [Guide] Using OpenDNS.com with or without Treewalk.


• RE: Firefox, Proxomitron and TreeWalk: "If You are having trouble with getting "Treewalk" personal dns server to work with "opendns" servers You can "edit" the treewalk config file."


• Try is disabling the phising filter:


• Try running Firefox after booting Windows XP Safe Mode.


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• In addition, I would like to run Spybot Search and Destroy to make sure nothing is interfering (I remember something not getting removed when I first ran it).