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Comment by dpcx | Hacker News Reader

I once had to troubleshoot why a Windows (XP I believe) computer was taking so long to browse the web. Turns out, it had a hosts file like this (generated from Spybot, IIRC). Cleaned out the hosts file, and it ran much faster.

Just something to think about when using massive hosts files.

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I tested exactly this recently and a hosts file dramatically helps browsing performance.

It's true there is an up-front cost paid when first loading it, and for the initial domain lookups. After initial lookups, DNS cache takes over.

The real benefit comes because countless requests for ads, tracking scripts and counters, etc, never leave your box. Network traffic is greatly reduced.

A comprehensive hosts file dramatically improved the performance of a relative's dialup internet connection a few years ago. A web that was borderline unusable became much snappier. And web pages had almost no ad adornments.

So on balance this is a very good thing. YMMV.

Yeah it was definitely Spybot. That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this. For the time, it was a good enough workaround in my experience. I don't really remember having network slowdown, but I may have been used to it since I think I was still on a blazing 56k modem at that point ;-)

Also did this. Once a domain is looked up and in the local DNS cache it's fine, but the initial DNS lookup can get stupidly slow, especially on older hardware.

XP must not of being storing them in a decent data structure. Geez. I wonder if this is the case for windows 7?

The more I think about it, the more I think it may have been Vista. Still doesn't bode well for Win7.

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