Windows 7 Networking/DNS Oddity

Ever since bumping my desktop up to the (otherwise great) Windows 7, I have this weird and obnoxious networking glitch.

Pushing to git repositories, pinging sites, committing to SVN repos, and SSHing through the command line (both through cygwin and the standard Windows prompt) almost always fails on the first 2 to 15 attempts. SSH/Git will fail very quickly with a DNS resolution error, and SVN (being oh-so-helpful) will just sit there for minutes until it times out with a “could not connect to host” error.

The SVN issue is particularly annoying because you can’t use Ctrl+C to stop an SVN commit on the Windows command line, and Tortoise will sit and spin on the cancellation, too. So I usually keep two command prompts and Windows Task Manager up and do the following:

1. Try the SVN commit in the lowest common directory on one prompt.
2. If it doesn’t start committing and transferring files within 5 seconds, end the process in the Task Manager.
3. Use the second prompt (sitting one directory up) to run an “svn cleanup” to release the locks.

Rinse, lather, and repeat, often about 10 times for a single commit. On 9 out of 10 commits. (I gave up on Tortoise very early in this process and just work command line.) Doesn’t matter whether it’s my Dreamhost server or a company’s fileserver, or whether I’m on my RoadRunner DNS or OpenDNS.

When it does commit, it commits and transfers very quickly. But it can take me 2-7 minutes to make a single simple SVN commit, and at 01:00 in the morning (late for me), that’s a mood-killer. …That was me on Tuesday night.

Greg is on the same network, behind the same router, also using Windows 7 and OpenDNS, and he doesn’t have this issue SVNing to Dreamhost. My netbook is Windows 7 Starter, on RoadRunner’s DNS, with Apache installed (and appropriate modifications to the hosts file for virtual hosts) like my desktop, and it doesn’t have the problem.

I’m stumped. I’m not even sure it’s a DNS problem. How do I diagnose this?

Aside: Still trying to raise dough for the hospital’s 5k on October 9! Help a sista out.