...if this is of any use. While you're there, additionally, is it possible to turn off optimisation in Network Manager e.g. under PPP settings, those three checked boxes which don't seem to alter if you try to change them normally? Or is that something else and does this have no effect on optimised images? This compression has got worse lately for some reason, very splodgy images like a child trying to go careful with felt tips or otherwise jumbled, like the login box on myspace.com or people's avatars on the Linux Mint forum, and this is not resolved by clearing the cache. |
Vodafone uses network based image compression for most GPRS links - both GSM & 3G. There has been talk on here a while ago that the network based image compression is restricted to particular IP ranges; however, these values were not discussed. There was also a reply from a Vodafone mod who said that Vodafone is looking to remove network based image compression from their 3G plans in future but there was no confirmed timeframe.
As your running linux - Ctr+Refresh in Firefox and derivatives and just normal refresh using Konqueror - (not sure about the rest) will reload images without compression (most) of the time.
I run a caching proxy server between Vodafone and my browser so that I cache non-compressed images locally and therefore, only have to force refresh once per site usually. But this causes other caveats so this may not be a solution to you.
Regarding DNS - at least for the last 2months or so Vodafone has been known for losing DNS packets in the network somewhere.
One thing I've done is also implement a caching DNS server that alleviates some DNS issues - again with many caveats. So it might not be for you.
Having only one DNS server in /etc/resolv.conf is fine for most of the time. Having more than one allows for secondaries if the first fails - they get tried in turn. Alternatively, if you have the rotate option it will change the behaviour to that of round-robin amongst the list of DNS servers.
One thing that I've yet to try in anger is: <> which translates DNS requests from the unreliable datagram protocol (UDP) to a slightly more reliable transmission control protocol (TCP). In theory - by looking at the tcp stats this would show where the Vodafone DNS issues lay - either within the network or at the server. However, I've yet to go down this path.
If you have further issues regarding the Linux side of the equation - then the normal response is to head over to <> as you'll have better Linux support there.>>