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I'm having an odd problem with gmail. My gmail is painfully, excruciatingly sluggish. Messages take a long while to load, send, frequent "#717" errors, etc. I realize that this is a rather common frustration and I have tried all the standard cures that people recommend.

I have found, however, that changing my computer's DNS settings often temporarily fixes the problem. The change doesn't have to be to any particular IP, it just has to be to some different IP. I usually toggle between Google's two public IPv4 DNS IPs (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4). Let's say I'm on the former at the moment and gmail is currently hanging while it loads a message. I open my network preferences and change to the latter, and the minute I hit "apply" Gmail instantly loads the message. This has happened many times; it is clearly repeatable. I have suggested that friends also try it, and they have seen the same effect.

So, two questions:

  1. What would cause this behavior?
  2. Is there anything I can do to automatically/programatically accomplish this so that I don't have to frequently manually toggle my DNS?
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You say you "toggle between Google's two public IPv4 DNS IPs" - you should be specifying both at the same time as the primary and secondary DNS. ? – w3d Aug 10 '12 at 23:08
Trying to accomplish this automatically is the wrong solution. It is as if you drive a car on a highway and the motor stalls every 5 minutes. Your solution would be to stop and restart the car automatically. Finding out what is wrong would be better. – Hennes Aug 10 '12 at 23:39
@w3d if I do that, then OS X always uses the first entry and the effect of the "toggling" doesn't occur. – Jack7890 Aug 11 '12 at 14:29
@Hennes agree 100%, I've just been using it as a poor stopgap. I'd love to find the root cause of this. – Jack7890 Aug 11 '12 at 14:29
Can you try adding gmails IPs to your OS's version of /etc/host and see if that helps? (and no, that is not a proper solution either, but it might work and it might yield additional clues as to what is wrong) – Hennes Aug 11 '12 at 17:53
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