Why my webpages load so slow - could anyone spy on my traffic ?

[XPcentric]

Webpages started to load slow suddenly and this behavior has been so for over a week now. I usually use Firefox, with the following addons enabled: Adblock, Better Privacy, Flashblock, HTTPS everywhere, NOScript, and many others disabled. These extensions didn't make me problems in the past.

However now it takes up to 16 seconds to completely load Google start page (ie. google.pt) or a search term (even in safary took 6 seconds to display searching for "weather new york"). It took 12 seconds to load forums.macrumors.com, and it takes about 6 seconds to load a simple webpage, measured with "lori" addon. ; Even if I use Safari or a different User, I still get slow page load. I'll have to use a different laptop with a different operating system to check if the time is still slow.

I wonder if a small internet service provider is spying on my traffic ? I can not explain why it works so slow, could it be my Macbook ? I only remember I've done a Repair Disk Permissions recently and also installed Little-Snitch which I now removed. I dont use a router at home.

I've just done a speedtest and it tested an internet speed of 75Mbps, it usually is 90Mbps, but right now I can see 80 customers in the network connected to the same ISP.

 

[Consultant]

Have you restarted your computer / your router?

 

[SPOOF]

This sounds more like a tech support question than a developer question.
But, I'll throw a quick answer at it anyway.

If your internet still seems fast for downloads, but takes a while for things to show up at the start, the most common issue is a slow DNS resolve (assuming this isn't just your system being slow or the browser acting funny).

Try throwing in a public DNS server like 4.2.2.2 in your settings for a moment to see if that changes how quickly things show up. If it does, your DNS server (likely hosted by your ISP) is probably just having issues and I'd expect them to sort it out for you soon™. To go back to full speed once they fix it, just remove the 4.2.2.2 and you'll go back to using the default DNS server again.

 

[XPcentric]

Edit2: Many thanks SPOOF your a Super user, I edited DNS and now works very well, although it seems the problem was only on my Mac and not on other laptops

Edit1: I booted from an external HDD using another version of OSX on the same Mac and it works very fast. So there is something wrong with my Mac. As I said both browsers load pages slowly. There is 90 GB space left on my HDD, and I've disabled some dock effects, so I guess its nothing to do with processing power. I have 4GB RAM.