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Super Fast Internet for Ubuntu

ubuntu.wordpress.com — "You can run a DNS cache on your computer. This will speed up the process of looking up domain names when browsing. The difference is about 30-60 ms for me."

Who dugg this? Made popular Aug 5, 2006

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  • Visceral, on 10/12/2007, -1/+41Went to submit this and found it already posted. I followed the directions and it's pretty easy to do, does show some speed increase.
  • Visceral, on 10/12/2007, -7/+43Seeing as it was posted on the Ubuntu blog, I think the title is appropriate.
  • Giga, on 10/12/2007, -5/+37Good to see someone checking before posting, it reduces the number of annoying dupe police posts. :)
  • dharm, on 10/12/2007, -15/+39anyone else getting annoyed with articles that can be used with any distro, but they throw its for ubuntu just for the hits...
  • scrubadub, on 10/12/2007, -2/+21And if you're running other distro's of Linux you should be able to tell if it's possible in your distro
  • playerx, on 10/12/2007, -5/+21When windows wasn't still in version 95 linux could already do this while you didn't even have multitasking, so stop trolling.
  • eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Don't you sass me.
  • pbjorge12, on 10/12/2007, -12/+25Holy ***** 30-60 ms!
    What a speed increase![/SARCASM]
  • HavocStyles, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11Seting up a transparent proxy using Squid will also help speed things up a bit. http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-setup-transparent-proxy-squid-howto.html
  • Giga, on 10/12/2007, -2/+12@stuffhappens - It might be earth-shattering to us, the submitter won't know until they post it and recieve feedback. Evidently some people find this interesting...

    Disclaimer: I was not one of them, but there is no need to insult the poster.
  • behemothaur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Good article for the DNS newbie - not everyone has configured a DNS server before!

    My only concern is the Ubuntu focus, caching DNS servers can be set up on any modern OS. And anyone who tries to turn this cool little IP how-to into a unix v. windows flame war should take a long hard look at themself...
  • scrubadub, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10on a half duplex connection (cable) where you're maxing your upload, and a few udp packets get dropped it can cause it to be a lot higher than 60ms
  • nickm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10as a member of the ubuntu marketing team i can say that "we" dont push it at all, join our marketing list and you will find no emails about digg.
    The users push ubuntu on their own.

    Those comments are simply wrong, but why should i expect different from a mac fan such as yourself.
  • PhAdE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6You forgot your [SARCASM] tag... Way to not be xhtml compliant, loser.
  • pozzoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7What I don't understand is people bitching about digg articles becoming popular. If it gets dugg it means it was helpful for some people (like myself) who didn't new it was possible/didn't think about it/didn't know how to do it. That's the good of digg, it is people who decide what is interesting/new and what is not, and not some elite who feel enlightened because they know something other people don't.

    Remember: Linux is getting more and more accessible for people, that means there are lots of new users, some of them who aren't really hackers.
  • thecwin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6KCorax: No, DNS works so that people can run their own DNS servers and the caches will refresh at intervals defined by the master domain records, which may be several days or minutes (for dynamic IPs and such). Many ISPs run their own DNS caching servers, and they will work in a similar way to one set up on a local computer.
  • carthik, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Multiply by the number of websites/urls you visit a day. It is not about the speed increase as much as it is about the responsiveness of the browser. Perceptibly snappier response == happy camper.
  • nickm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6but it was posted on the ubuntu blog... and that guide isnt for linux users, its for linux users who have the apt-get package manager and have that package in the repo, which ubuntu does.
    another distro would require a modified guide.
  • eplawless, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8You want to know the weird part? I just got my 10 Ubuntu cds yesterday; I've never used linux before and I figured I'd try it out. I booted off the cd and opened up Digg and this is the first story I saw.
  • DarkElf109, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Best thing to do is combine them. I run a Squid cache with a DJBDNS DNS cache on the same machine, and I get some outstanding speed increases when I visit any of the image-intensive sites that I frequent.
  • morn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"The difference is about 30-60 ms for me. Multiply that difference by the number of websites you visit a day for an approximate estimate of the speed improvement."

    Let's say on a really busy day I visit 100 different domains (= DNS lookups). 60ms * 100 = 6000ms = 6 seconds. That really IS amazing; each day, I have a whole new 6 seconds I can invest in fun activities like unzipping PK3 files to make Quake 3 run faster. w00t!
  • stonyhill, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This is genius! I have a satellite internet connection, which has a fast pipe, but a lot of latency, due to the fact that the satellite is thousands of miles away. This little trick saves me about 900 milliseconds loading each page. That is huge.
  • bobslaede, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6I second that.
    Please please please just write "For linux".
  • justice7, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5how many sites do you visit in a few months? lol

    say you were a hardcore net user and visit 50 a day.. that is , 50 DIFFERENT sites a day.

    50 x 30 days x 3 months ....... 4500 .. figure the average DNS entry in the file is oh.. 15 bytes...

    you're talking a whole 67K of disk space......
  • Darmichar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@SuckMyDigg
    So when you're gaining 30-60ms it's a huge speed gain, but when you're losing 30-60ms it's not noticeable?
  • Quakes, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5As is said somewhere above here, the article is on an Ubunutu blog, thus the title is quite justified.
  • jhepoy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I am an Ubuntu and MEPIS user.. in short, a Linux user.. I have high respects for Ubuntu, but somehow being fed up seeing too much Ubuntu posts on digg.. I would buy it if the title was "for Linux".. but nevertheless, it is a good article..
  • egrabosky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@kcorax-
    most "clueless home users" wont bother to do this anyway...They most likely dont even know what DNS means.
  • Crypty, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I got my 10 CDs yesterday as well. Probably just a coincidence, but maybe it has something to do with shipping days. I'm giving some to my friends but iIm not looking forward to the lifetime support they will be coming to me for. Oh well.
  • nickm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3yes, remember this is not a page cach, just a cach of the www addres and the IP it resolves to, it can be done in a text file.
  • pozzoe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4It is easier if they make the "only for Ubuntu" tutorial (or "only for Redhat", etc). If they wanted to make a linux tutorial they should probably start explaining configure; make; make install, and dependencies, etc.... this way the poster just says "use apt-get", "edit this and that", "done".

    Another thing is that the poster probably tested this only in ubuntu.

    So, making a "linux tutorial" should be harder, to write and to use.
  • DarkElf109, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Edit timed out...

    Instructions here: http://cr.yp.to/djbdns/run-cache-x-home.html
  • nickm, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5and phocion55, thats totally the wrong attitude to have, stop being so elitist, if you have a problem with people not being able to use other variations of linux then help them to do so, i used to hold your opinion until my friend gave me a CD from Ship-it, open your mind.
  • Saoshyant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Say, if you were to use this for a few months, how much disk space would it consume?
  • Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Mac fan!? Far from it - I can't remember the last time I touched one.

    I've tried the lot of distros and am happily using Gentoo. And if the marketing team isn't pushing out anything who put up that huge Ubuntu billboard?

    There's nothing wrong with Ubuntu - it's decent...just sick of having all my comments flamed from a "I Just Installed Ubuntu Yesterday Cuz It's Cool" 15 year old.
  • Quakes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Pop the CD in, boot up your computer, press "Install"....?
  • tokachu, on 10/12/2007, -4/+6What's the point in saying this only applies to Ubuntu? What's that, 1/1000th of the Internet population?

    There's cheap home routers that do that for every OS that connects to the internet -- next time, mention THAT.
  • 16777216, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4stuffhappens@
    No *****? Well I am glad this is old news to you, I knew about it too, just not how...
    Now thanks to ozguralaz I do. And how come you didn't berate HavocStyles for helping every one by linking to a Squid how-to? Or DarkElf109 for his DJBDNS + Squid how-to link? Giga was right it might be old news to you and him and a lot of people but there are still a lot of Linux noobs and intermediates out here that need info like this. Instead of whining and bitching say it is old news and link or digg some new news. After all the more links to Linux related info we have old or not the more people we might convert to GNU/Linux.
  • Phocion55, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8Ugh. Why does this have to be "Super Fast Internet for Ubuntu" when these steps work for almost EVERY OTHER DISTRO? I guess if it were called "Super Fast Internet on you Linux Box" no one would give it the time of day since Ubuntu wasn't in the title.

    Sign of the times.
  • Hirnhygien, on 10/12/2007, -10/+12Thats really *great news*, what a PHANTASTIC INNOVATION!

    I can't tell how long Windows uses DNS caching for faster Browsing. But at least since W2K. FYI: You can flush this cache with "ipconfig /flushdns".
  • aepex, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Many programs for other operating systems can do this as well. There's nothing special about Ubuntu as far as DNS caching goes.
  • rs, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Funny that the article is about dnsmasq... if you're running OpenWRT you get this for free. :-)

    Anyway, as someone who runs cable and DSL infrastructure (not the last mile itself, wholesale stuff via MSOs and wholesale DSL, with non-trivial numbers of customers on our part), I have mixed feelings on this. Of *course* from an original design perspective it's a good thing to be running a cacheing nameserver on each machine - that's the way things were designed to work. However, from an ISP perspective, I'd be embarrassed if I had more than a couple percent of my customers going out of their way to manually set it up (freebie with dnsmasq doesn't count). Why? Because working cacheing nameservers are something for which customers are paying me, and they have a right to expect them to work properly. My mom and dad should not have to jump through a bunch of hoops to increase their internet performance. Just like packet-loss-free last mile, email services with high availability, etc, it's something that should come with the service. If people are seeing increases in performance in fetching a web page that are substantially better than the ping time to the DNS server, then their ISP should be ashamed. Of course, good luck finding someone in tech support at your average ISP to whom one can complain about this, but I digress...
  • nickm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3yes, wasn't refering to you as a mac fan, the first comment was for nathan.
    although i was right in assuming you used gentoo :) because i too used to use it

    i only said we're not pushing out anything onto digg.com
    and i wasnt aware of anything about the billboard untill i saw it, i would assume that came directly from canonical, however
  • stuffhappens, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4To all those moaning whingers complaining about my post - you miss the point. What the hell is Digg supposed to be?

    If it's just going to be a link farm for any old stuff on the 'net that anyone happens to find then fine - it's descending to that point rapidly.

    If it's supposed to be *cutting edge* stuff then - oops!

    If it's supposed to be a Ubuntu/Ajax/Firefox extensions bookmark site then it's doing a good job.

    Look, if I found an article on how something is done - let's say installing antivirus software on Linux - and it was new to me, the first thing I'd do is check for other sources to verify the accuracy of the info and also to see whether this was 'old hat' or new stuff. If there was enough evidence to suggest that what I had found was pretty much run of the mill then I'd not bother posting it on Digg. If, however, I confirmed that I'd stumbled across a new tool or way of doing something, I'd check for dupes and then consider posting.

    I don't wish to make this personal towards the submitter, but they have 'sensationalised the run-of-the-mill'. DNS caching does not make your internet 'super fast' and is nothing radical yet the story gets 590+ Diggs - well, if there are 590+ noob Ubuntu users who find that thrilling then all I can say is that they really need to make a conscious effort to visit some of the Ubuntu/Linux howtos and documents sites to see what can be done instead of hanging round here to see what turns up - at this rate, it will be a few weeks before someone posts an 'interesting' article on SSH that has all the noobs racing to turn off telnet. Perhaps then by the end of the year all these guys will be finding out (via a Digg post) about creating their own SSL certificates. It's lazy learning - like fish smimming around aimlessly waiting for someone to throw a handful of food into the bowl.

    Nuff said.
  • speshak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2man lookupd
  • scrubadub, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Might wanna check out fasterfox. Probably covers most of google's accelerator so you might be able to drop it
    http://fasterfox.mozdev.org/
  • cphuntington97, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Oh I get it.. 10 copies of the SAME cd.

    At first I was like, "man, ubuntu sure has bloated up quickly!"
  • pozzoe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2It is news for linux at least... maybe it should come by default, but it doesn't. So the news is that it is possible, and how to do it. In fact... I wonder... what if I wanted to remove dns caching from windows?
  • runep, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3nscd already caches DNS lookups although in a protocol neutral fashion. Try "man nscd".

    Besides, you can't measure DNS lookup response times unless you know what entries are already cached in the DNS server that you're querying and what requests are being forwarded.

    I'm not saying there are no advantages in running a caching DNS server, but your claims of speed increase are dubious.

    Also, Redhat had a caching-nameserver package since I was a wee lad. Seems Ubuntu has taken over the position as the number one ricer's distribution.
  • Poromenos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Yeah, copies usually means, well, copies. It's not a copy if it has different content :P
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