[svlug] to hosts or not to hosts

[Skip Evans]

There's no burden yet, so as long as the machines are 
performing reasonably well without the entries in /etc/hosts 
I'll leave them as is.

Thanks all,
Skip

Bill Ward wrote:
> There are two ways that could hurt performance:
> 
> - DNS: you have to make a query to the primary or secondary DNS server
> which is out on the Internet somewhere.  However, caching should
> minimize the impact of this so it shouldn't be a major factor.  You
> could improve this by running a caching DNS server inside your LAN
> which centralizes the caching of such queries.  This would improve DNS
> performance for all host lookups, not just your own.
> 
> - Routing: your packets have to go out to the router and undergo NAT
> only to be returned back into the LAN.  Accessing the 192.168.1.x
> address directly would avoid this, but then you have to maintain the
> IP addresses in a local DNS server or maintain /etc/hosts files on all
> client machines.
> 
> Personally I wouldn't bother with either fix unless it was proving to
> be a problem.  The router can handle the traffic and the DNS caching
> should minimize the first issue.  You have to also consider your time
> it takes to set up the solution, and maintain it as hosts come and go
> over time, and decide if that's worth a small performance boost.  On
> the other hand, if your router is over burdened, or host name lookups
> are slow (e.g. if you have a slow net connection or your DNS servers
> do) then it becomes more urgent.
> 
>
-- 
====================================
Skip Evans
Big Sky Penguin, LLC
503 S Baldwin St, #1
Madison WI 53703
608.250.2720
http://bigskypenguin.com
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