Slow DNS = Rubbish
There’s a CNET story running right now about how slow DNS is the bane of a fast connection. They write:
“We hear stories about carriers spending billions of dollars to build new fiber-to-the-home networks or 3G (third-generation) wireless networks,” said Paul Mockapetris, inventor of the DNS architecture and chairman and chief scientist at Nominum. “But broadband providers should also spend some money adding more DNS capability. Pure bandwidth doesn’t solve the problem if the DNS servers can’t respond quickly.”
However, there’s one simple reason why DNS speeds don’t actually matter: caching. Say that an uncached DNS query takes 250ms:
-bash-3.00$ time nslookup apple.com
real 0m0.227s
Then, for every web domain we browse, we incur a one-time hit of 250ms. It doesn’t matter how many times we visit the site after that–the DNS work is already done and saved for future use. Every now and then, our computers will check to make sure the DNS is up to date, and we won’t notice that minor penalty. As for games, the DNS resolution is the just the barrier to establishing a connection. Once that connection is up, no more DNS is done. And, with threading, as your game is loading in one thread, the DNS can be resolving in another thread, essentially taking up no real time at all; just waiting for the DNS resolver Sockets to unblock.
This entry was posted on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 9:13 pm and is tagged with third generation wireless networks, dns work, cnet story, dns architecture, chief scientist, broadband providers, nominum, dns query, dns resolution, dns servers, home networks, dns resolver, web domain, bane, rubbish, inventor, sockets, billions of dollars, capability, bandwidth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.
on August 19th, 2006 at 6:36 am
Additionally your ISP and probably your router too, cache.
on August 19th, 2006 at 8:15 am
[…] Update: Elliot Back has a similar opinion, calling the claims ‘rubbish’. I am surpised that others have not picked up on it […]
on August 19th, 2006 at 11:40 am
I’ve been using OpenDNS for a while, and it’s been great. Faster than the regular DNS, or so it seems.
on August 20th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Amen to that! I think DNS is a pretty damn well optimized system…