Hosts File Question

[us3rnotfound]

If my local hosts file gets extremely long, will my internet browsing speed decrease?

 

[Nothinman]

Possibly, everytime a hostname is looked up it will read through that file before asking DNS.

 

[Davegod]

yeah, I was using some Tweak XP app and it had a bug where every time I added something, it would also add the entire original contents. Browsing got a bit poor until I figured to look in there

I dont suppose anyone knows of a parser, so you can merge hosts files together without having sutff in multiple times? I downloaded mine from everythingisnt bloody ages ago, and want to get more recent version... but also I added loads of stuff myself all over the place

 

[Nothinman]

uniq

 

[spyordie007]

Originally posted by: shminu
If my local hosts file gets extremely long, will my internet browsing speed decrease?

Your browsing speed wont decrease at all; once a host has been identified windows doesnt need to look at the host file until the next time it needs to resolve something.

Granted if there is a problem with the hosts file (corruption, or just a bunch of garbage that slows the machine down) it may take a little longer to resolve hostnames.

 

[Schadenfroh]

host files work with firefox?

 

[Nothinman]

host files work with firefox?

Hosts files are a part of the TCP/IP stack, as long as it's configured to use the hosts file before DNS, it'll work with anything.