Increasing the Size of Your DNS Cache

You can speed up your browsing by increasing the size of this DNS cache. A bigger DNS cache enables addresses for more websites to be stored ocally, which means fewer external DNS lookups. To increase the size of your computer’s DNS cache, you have to edit the Windows Registry, which is the large database where all the configuration ettings for your system are stored. You edit the Registry using the Registry Editor utility. Here’s what you need to do: 1. Open the Start menu, enter regedit into the search box, and then press Enter. 2. When the Registry Editor, opens, as shown in Figure 15.8, navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\ Services\Dnscache\Parameters key 3. Select Edit, New, DWORD (32-bit) Value. 4. Name this new item CacheHashTableBucketSize. 5. Right-click this new item and select Modify. 6. In the Value Data dialog box, change the value to 1. 7. Select Edit, New, DWORD (32-bit) Value. 8. Name this new item CacheHashTableSize. 9. Right-click this new item and select Modify. 10. In the Value Data dialog box, change the value to 180. 11. Select Edit, New, DWORD (32-bit) Value. 12. Name this new item MaxCacheEntryTtlLimit. 13. Right-click this new item and select Modify. 14. In the Value Data dialog box, change the value to ff00. Note, these are zeroes. 15. Select Edit, New, DWORD (32-bit) Value. 16. Name this new item MaxSOACacheEntryTtlLimit. 17. Right-click this new item and select Modify. 18. In the Value Data dialog box, change the value to 12d. For these changes to take effect, you need to close the Registry Editor and restart Windows. You should notice a slight speedup when next you browse the Web.