On Feb 1, all network traffic became … weird. The symptom could best be described as DNS requests being slowed by more than 2x… just enough so that attempts to connect to web servers, mail servers, web pages etc. would randomly fail on the first attempt, then work on subsequent attempts.

It was so bad that everything I did on the web, including email, had to be done twice. Once to fail, then again to connect. I noticed the problem on all devices, not just windows PCs but the iPad and iPhone as well, so I was pretty sure it was more than a device specific issue.

I waited a day or so, hoping it would clear, but after it became apparent it wasn’t getting better, I called Telus. They checked my modem and connection and pronounced all good. They also stated there were no DNS server issues.

So I was stumped.

Finally this week I decided to try the universal computer fix-all: I rebooted the Telus high speed ADSL modem. As soon as the reboot was done, it was clear that the problems were also gone.

I am used to certain types of hardware running for ages without needing a reboot, so was a little surprised that the modem needed the reboot to clear it’s buffers or whatever got mangled.

For now I’m just going to monitor and see how frequently this occurs, but it sure was weird.