Windows 10, VPN and slow DNS lookups

Solution 1:

If in the current version of Windows 10, VPN seems to have too many problems, this might leave only two options :

1. Wait for VPN to be fixed in Windows 10
2. Downgrade to Windows 7, as described below :

If you have installed Windows 10 over Windows 7, and you have kept the resulting folder C:\Windows.old, then you can use it to return to Windows 7.

This is the procedure :

• In the Windows 10 Start menu select Settings
• Click Update & Security
• Under "Go back to a previous version of Windows", click Get started
• Enter some angry message text into the "Why are you going back?" screen
• Click Next and wait, as this will take some time
• You will need to have your password to Windows 7 once the process is finished.

This is further explained in detail with screenshots in the article : How to downgrade Windows 10.

If you have deleted the Windows.old folder, a clean install of Windows 7 is probably the only remaining way to downgrade.

Ensure that you have a complete backup of your data before starting.

(Note: Remember that this answer is from 2015.)

Solution 2:

Disable IPv6 both on your NIC and the VPN. That did it for me.

Solution 3:

I had this problem in Win 10 - Chrome / Firefox and Edge. I disabled IPV6 on the ethernet NIC and the DNS lookup up time reduced from 20+ seconds to almost instantaneous. Settings / Network & Internet / Ethernet / Change Adapter Settings / Properties - and untick Internet Protocol V6.

Solution 4:

I had a same problem and found a solution which worked for me. What I did was to change the binding order of adapters in Windows 10 in such a way that Wifi has less priority than VPN. Here's how to do that:

1. Open a PowerShell as Administrator
2. See all the adapters with the command netstat -rn
3. View the interface index using the command Get-NetIPInterface
4. Change the metrics of the Wifi adapter to be a bigger number than the VPN (in my adapters list the VPN was listed as Microsoft Wi-Fi Direct Virtual Adapter)

You make this change with the following command: Set-NetIPInterface -InterfaceIndex "type the interface index of the wifi card inside double quotes" -InterfaceMetric "type the new metric which should be a bigger number than the virtual adapter inside double quotes"

I hope that helps, it worked for me.