"Resolving Host" is making the new Microsoft Edge unusable.

Security software has been sometimes observed to cause problems of this nature.

Visiting edge://histograms/Net.DNS will show the histograms of DNS lookup times which will help confirm that this is really an issue with slow DNS vs. any sort of UX glitch.

Chromium has two major codepaths for DNS resolution: One relies upon the system resolver, and one relies upon resolution logic within Chromium itself. For compat reasons, on Windows, Chromium historically used the system resolver rather than its own built in DNS resolver client. They had found (many years ago) that some home routers behaved poorly when the Chromium resolver performed many resolutions in parallel, and sometimes poor performance was observed if routers or upstream DNS did not perform well with IPv6 queries.

Over the last decade, Chromium has started switching on their own internal resolver more broadly, in part because the built-in resolver has support for DNS-over-HTTPS, a new feature that obtains DNS information in a fundamentally different way (improving security and privacy). If you’re seeing good DNS performance from other browsers (which typically only use the system resolver) but poor performance from Chromium, the built-in client may be the culprit.

If you’re encountering this problem on Windows, collecting a NetLog (https://textslashplain.com/2020/01/17/capture-network-logs-from-edge-and-chrome/) will allow us to analyze it (https://textslashplain.com/2020/04/08/analyzing-network-traffic-logs-netlog-json/) to take a closer look at what’s happening under the hood. Ultimately if the problem does appear to be that the DNS request itself is simply slow, we may need a lower-level (e.g. Wireshark PCAP) network trace to get a complete picture of what’s going on.

If you're running the very latest version of Edge 86+ on Windows on a non-Enterprise device, you might try enabling DNS-over-HTTPS (see edge://settings/?search=secure%20dns) to see if it solves the problem. 

We have a group policy that disables the built-in DNS client: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/deployedge/microsoft-edge-policies#builtindnsclientenabled;

I was finally able to resolve this issue. On another site i saw a reference to Malwarebytes being the culprit.  So I shut off Malwarebytes Web Protection and my browser speed returned to normal, maybe even faster.

Updated to new version of Edge a couple weeks ago and am looking for a way to 'downgrade' to the old version... or recommendations for a non-chromium based, secure browser.

Why?  Because the 'Resolving Host' delay that Edge is now performing on just about EVERY web page is driving me nuts.  Delays page loading by 2 - 10 seconds on EVERY PAGE.  How is that better?

I've tried clearing Edge's cache, Windows cache, changing dns to 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4 and to the two IP's specified by my ISP (in addition to relying on my router's handling of DNS), rebooting modem+router/PC.  Nothing has helped.  

Any other suggestions?  Perhaps point me down a better path?

I found a solution to this problem on this site https://www.ghacks.net/2016/10/20/how-to-fix-resolving-host-issues-on-windows/ among the "comments" and it worked for me.

The comment from a Bob is "I was having this issue with Google Chrome, Microsft Edge and Opera browser. Tried flushing the DNS (ipconfig /flushdns) which didn’t help. I knew that the router wasn’t the problem since all of my Mac computers were running fine.

Finally decided to go into Device Manager and delete everything under Network. Restarted Windows 10 and allow it to rediscover the network devices. No more lag and the Resolving Host is gone in every browser that I tried. HTH

Ross, I appreciate your reply and suggested test.

Firefox - 95% of the time the destination page begins loading IMMEDIATELY... just like Edge 1.0 used to do.  With little or no pauses during page 'painting'. (Again, just like Edge 1.0.)

New Edge AND Chrome - Both during initial retrieving of the page (sometimes as much as 8 seconds) as well as during page 'painting' (1-4 second pauses), the browser will show 'Resolving Host' in the lower left corner.

Browser cache was cleared prior to every page load.  Tests were run Firefox then Edge and Chrome as well as Edge and Chrome then Firefox.

This is also not an isolated case.

We are considering whether or not to move from Edge 1 to New Edge at my company (200 computers).  Our testing there shows that it is also noticeably slower, also showing a 'waiting for cache' as opposed to  'Resolving Host.'

Hi my name is Ross, I'm an independent advisor. I'd be happy to help with your issue.

Could you try the same pages using Firefox (with is non chromium) and let us know the results. This will help rule out anything system based and check the issue is with Edge.

Regards,

Ross