Why would browsers be slow to connect and load, even if laptop changes locations?

[Moof1904]

Friend called and his G4 laptop has recently started delaying when connecting to web sites (the browser spends a lot of time with 'contacting [the given url] in the status bar) and when it finally connects to a site, it takes a long time for pages to load.

This happens no matter which browser he's running and happens wherever he is with his laptop (home, friend's house, work, etc.)

Any thoughts?

 

[mckyvlle]

My guess is that the browser is resolving DNS, probably waiting for the stale cache to timeout before getting new DNS values. You can try manually clearing the DNS cache.

For Leopard, in Terminal, run:

dscacheutil -flushcache

 

[Moof1904]

Thanks for the suggestion. It didn't improve things. Is it possible that his DNS server setting in the Network control panel is incorrect? Would that cause this?

 

[mckyvlle]

That's possible. Is he using DHCP? That will automatically configure DNS and other network settings for him.