What is DNS Prefetching?
Introduction
DNS Prefetching is a browser feature that speeds up browsing by predicting and loading the links you might click on next. In order to do this, it needs to know your browsing pattern. The more information it has, the better its predictions will be. This article explains how DNS prefetching works and what you can do about it if you don’t want your browsing data collected.
DNS prefetching tries to resolve domain names before you actually navigate to them, and caches the IP addresses locally: this speeds up loading webpages since it doesn’t require an additional roundtrip to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) for a domain name resolution every time. It also reduces latency, since the connection to your ISP is faster than the average time it takes to load a webpage.
What is DNS Prefetching and how does it work?
DNS prefetching is a technique that automatically loads the data associated with links in the browser’s cache before the user clicks on them. This process relieves some of the load time when browsing web pages because certain parts of them are already complete.
The specifics of how DNS prefetching works are not yet fully known due to proprietary specifics by companies, but there are several hypotheses about how this technique functions. One example is that browsers use web server logs to predict what content the user will request and then requests that content beforehand so it can be cached in advance. Another hypothesis is that browsers try to determine if the next page that will be visited has common elements with other pages that have been visited recently and requests that content beforehand.
How to set up DNS Pre-fetching on your network?
To prevent DNS lookups from slowing down your browsing, it’s advisable to set up DNS prefetching on your network. DNS prefetches are configured in your web browser settings and tell the browser to use certain servers when accessing domains ahead of time so that when you visit them, they don’t need to be looked up again.
There is usually one pre-fetched domain for each website you visit, but you can add other domains if desired. You might want to add a domain if it redirects users to another site or hosts ads for other websites. It’s also advisable to add a few popular domains such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Netflix, and other sites you commonly access.
It’s recommended to set up this feature on your router so that it happens automatically every time you connect to the internet. If you’re not able to do that, you can also configure DNS prefetching in your computer’s network settings.
What are the benefits of DNS Prefetching?
DNS Prefetching is a technique that web browsers use to lessen the waiting time for DNS resolution. Every time sites are visited, there is an address lookup process which can take significant amounts of time if this process has not been initiated by the browser. There are many benefits including increased performance and reduced latency. One benefit is that DNS Prefetching can keep an opened connection alive, which means there is no need to send a new HTTP request every time the user clicks on another link. This technique enables users to browse more efficiently while saving time and data usage.
What are the disadvantages of DNS Prefetching?
The disadvantages of DNS Prefetching consist of the following:
– Connections can be terminated or slowed.
– It can cause users to incorrectly identify which connection is the best for them.
– There are DNS caching services that provide better results for users, such as Google Public DNS.
– It does not provide any benefit for users that use proxy servers or SSL encryption.
– Prefetching can result in users downloading content from a location that is not the optimal download server.
Conclusion
DNS Prefetching is a technique used to speed up the loading times of websites by using data from previous visits. When you visit a website, your browser accesses DNS servers for its address and location on the internet – this process can take time. What’s more, it may be necessary for your device to make multiple requests before fully downloading all of the information needed for that site. With DNS Prefetching enabled, browsers will start requesting information about any domains linked within pages as they are being downloaded or visited in order to reduce load-times when accessing those sites later on. The benefits of enabling DNS Prefetching include faster page loads due to lower latency since less bandwidth is required between devices and web servers; however there are certain risks involved. If the DNS Prefetching service does not have any information for future requests, it may be forced to use cached data which can potentially contain inaccurate or incomplete details. This means that any additional traffic caused by wrong addresses could result in an increased load on your internet service provider’s servers.
