I started having router difficulties again and decided to check out the logs...

[catabryna]

I'm running Ubuntu 10.10 with UFW and wasn't having any difficulties until about a week ago. My router is once again losing its internet connection; I call it "redlighting" because my router has a light that indicates that the connection has been lost. I then get the DNS poisoning messages. Some of you may recall that I've had these difficulties before. So I decided to look through some of the logs and it seems as if there were some major changes beginning on April 4th and the problems have continued to worsen over the past week.

The following is from my auth.log.

Apr 10 11:59:04 cbreezen-T-6345U firefox-bin: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "http://drudge.com IN AAAA", got type "A"
Apr 10 11:59:04 cbreezen-T-6345U firefox-bin: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "edcone.com IN AAAA", got type "A"
Apr 10 11:59:04 cbreezen-T-6345U firefox-bin: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "scoop.epluribusmedia.org IN AAAA", got type "A"
Apr 10 11:59:04 cbreezen-T-6345U firefox-bin: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "atrios.blogspot.com IN AAAA", got type "A"
Apr 10 11:59:04 cbreezen-T-6345U firefox-bin: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "ezraklein.typepad.com IN AAAA", got type "A"
Apr 10 11:59:04 cbreezen-T-6345U firefox-bin: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "feministe.us IN AAAA", got type "A"
Apr 10 11:59:04 cbreezen-T-6345U firefox-bin: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "feministing.com IN AAAA", got type "A"
Apr 10 11:59:04 cbreezen-T-6345U firefox-bin: gethostby*.getanswer: asked for "http://firedoglake.com IN AAAA", got type "

Can someone tell me what this would indicate? I have not visited any of these URLs at all in the past week. In fact, other than FDL, I've never visited any of the remaining sites at all. The flood of these entries into the log seems to coincide with the times that I lose the connection. In addition, most of the entries appear to be related to politics.

I am running UFW, Firefox and AdBlock Plus. Could this be caused by KDE Konsole? I did download Kapman for those times when I'm bored and I just need to kind of zone out and I'm afraid that I may have inadvertently opened up some ports when I did this.

It is not a major deal for me to reload the OS and it may be that I need to do that. Any help would be appreciated. I've searched the Google, and it was not my friend in this instance. lol!

[struggle4progress]

1. Not an expert, but I think AAAA is used for IPv6 support

IPv4 will become increasingly inadequate but IPv6 is still uncommon

The transition offers the possibility of nightmarish confusion. A few years back, an OSX upgrade slowed my internet access to a crawl: multiple requests for an IPv6 address were made before any default to a request for an IPv4 address

I'd guess your system is asking for IPv6 addresses (... asked for ... IN AAAA ...) and your DNS is finding only IPv4 addresses (... got type "A" ...). It's hard to know, but perhaps you should first examine how your browser is set up for IPv4 and IPv6. Maybe examine also how you handle links from websites you visit: is your browser looking up DNS addresses for such links on the off-chance you might want to follow one?

... In the Domain Name System, hostnames are mapped to IPv6 addresses by AAAA resource records ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6#Address_Format

... The IPv4 address space can be subdivided into 5 classes - Class A, B, C, D and E. Each class consists of a contiguous subset of the overall IPv4 address range ... http://compnetworking.about.com/od/workingwithipaddresses/l/aa042400b.htm

[catabryna]

2. Don't you think it is odd that my browser would be deciding in advance

what sites I "might" want to visit in the future? I rarely ever click on links, even here at DU. So, are you saying that perhaps a link for a URL shows up in a DU post and my ISP or browser assumes that some day, maybe, I might want to click on that link, and starts reaching out to find IPv6 addresses for those links? Doesn't that seem to be sort of jumping the gun? And, if I'm not clicking on those links, how in the world could that assumption be made? There are hundreds of these entries with the same timestamp and the timing matches up with the times my router goes down.

Why would that happen? Some of the log entries include my own ISP's web address , my router manufacturer's web address, etc? I haven't even visited these sites since I did a clean install of Ubuntu.

I don't do much on this computer. I visit DU, I listen to progressive radio and classical music stations around the country, read the Irish Times and a small handful of others online papers out of Canada and check what little e-mail I get. That's about it.

And, why would this start last weekend, but not be a problem in the previous six weeks?

[struggle4progress]

3. One way it might happen is that your browser prefetches from

links on webpages you load or attempts to prefetch for such links

Link prefetching
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_prefetching

Firefox 3.5 performs DNS prefetching. This is a feature by which Firefox proactively performs domain name resolution on both links that the user may choose to follow as well as URLs for items referenced by the document, including images, CSS, JavaScript, and so forth. This prefetching is performed in the background, so that the DNS is likely to already have been resolved by the time the referenced items are actually needed. This reduces latency when, for example, the user actually clicks a link ...
Controlling DNS prefetching
https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Controlling_DNS_prefetching

[catabryna]

4. Thanks...

I found the config page on Firefox and changed the settings. Hopefully, this will resolve the issue. :)

[catabryna]

5. Just thought I'd let you know...

this wasn't the problem. The problem appears to be a combination of things, but primarily with my modem and/or router. I made some changes, but I think it's probably time to take my ISP up on their offer to replace them at no charge. These things have outlived their usefulness and it's time for an upgrade. :-)