Beware of Using Google Or OpenDNS For iTunes

Relayman writes "Joe Mailer wanted to download an iTunes movie recently and his Apple TV told him it would take two hours. When he switched his DNS resolver settings, the download time dropped to less than 20 seconds. Apparently, iTunes content is served by Akamai which uses geolocation based on the IP address of the DNS request to determine which server should provide his content. When you use Google or OpenDNS to resolve the Apple domain name, all the requests to Akamai appear to be coming from the same location and they're all directed to the same server pool, overloading that pool and causing the slow downloads. The solution: be wary of using Google or OpenDNS when downloading iTunes files or similar large files. Use your own ISP's DNS servers instead or run your own resolving DNS server."

Comments

Good advice - Always use your ISP for DNS

[crusty_architect]

This is a very widespread practice now. Use your own ISP for DNS.

Re:Good advice - Always use your ISP for DNS

[MachDelta]

MIL - I realized after a few seconds that probably stands for "Mother-In-Law", but the mechanic in me instantly interpreted it as "Malfunction Indicator Lamp."

Shortly after that I had a chuckle upon realizing that they're both things no one likes to see.

Re:Good advice - Always use your ISP for DNS

[CheerfulMacFanboy]

yeah, since you can't set secondary dns servers in any modern os...

Sure you can, Primary and secondary are setup to openDNS on my router...

Do they resolve wooosh.com?

Re:M$ does it too...

[deniable]

It's a string in MS BASIC. I believe the relevant line is: 10 LET M$="MICROSOFT"

Re:WTF

[dontmakemethink]

WTF is iTunes?

It's the virus that is installed when you update Quicktime.