DNS Name Resolution Slow on Internet
 

It seems to take forever sometimes to resolve a hostname while surfing the Internet. I have Charter Pipeline and I think their DNS servers are slow or having problems. How can I set up an automatic DNS cache to speed things up or are there better DNS servers I could use?

Thanks,
Ted.

Yes, setting up a local caching nameserver will help. Mandrake has a .mdk package called "caching-namesever.mdk" or something like that. It basically installs BIND with just the rootserver list and the "." zone configured. You can add it to the start sequence in /etc/rc.d/init.d with chkconfig --add <whatever>. Then you'll want to make sure that your /etc/resolv.conf has an entry "nameserver 127.0.0.1" to point to itself (BIND should automatically listen on all local IPs).

Any other boxes you might have should point their /etc/resolv.conf to whatever the IP of the box is that you added the caching nameserver to. Oh, and you probably want to modify the /etc/named.conf on your caching-nameserver box to forward to your ISP's nameservers (in the forwarders section).

man named and man named.conf for more info.

Thank you very much. I will check that out. I knew BIND could be used as a DNS server for the local intranet, I didn't know it could do DNS caching. Very cool.

Happy Holidays,
Ted.

Wow, thanks. That made a big difference. I really appreciate the help.

Happy Holidays,
Ted.