Making a Network More Responsive

[Blade of Grass]

Intro
Hey guys,
This is going to be a somewhat long How-To on how to make your internet feel faster. This is one of many ways, and it deals with how you actually connect to the internet. This is 100% legal and doesn't involve calling your ISP. If there are any errors in this post, please PM me with the corrections and I will try to update it ASAP.

I got thinking about ways that you could theoretically make your internet more responsive (there-fore it feels faster) and decided to share the idea with you guys.

Now I have gotten this to speed up my network abit, I usually get 200ms pings from Google, now I'm getting 45ms, big improvement IMHO.

NOTE: If you're wondering why all my domain names (URLs) end with a .com. it's because the trailing dot (the one after the com) identifies it as a fully qualified domain name (I'll abbreviate to FQDN) as opposed to a relative domain name (RDN). FQDNs identify themselves back to the root server. IP addresses do NOT have a trailing dot at the end, no matter what.

Introducing Myself
My name is Chase, I'm fourteen years old and I live in Ontario. I have been interested in computer for the past few years, and recently got interested in networking. I have no proper education in networking, but I've read about it alot.
Ok, enough about me, now here's how it works.

The Plan
Now, a long time ago, when the internet was small and new, there was a file. The host file was its name. And this singular file (on every computer), held the IP address of every computer in the world on it. Yes, you read right, EVERY single computer's IP address was in this file. And, as the internet began to grow, so did these files. Network admins had to manually edit said file every time a computer was added to the network, and with the rapid growth, it was being edited sooner and sooner.

This was a taxing process, and it took time for them to do. So, they started to think, about how this could fix this, how they could make the internet more efficient, more automated like computers should be, and how the internet could work without this file. And their solution? It was called DNS.

DNS stands for Domain Name System. A DNS server is a machine that takes a friendly URL (say www.google.com.) and resolves (basically, it scans its host file) it into Google's website's IP address (173.194.77.147).

Now, could you imagine having to remember hundreds of IP addresses? If DNS wasn't invented you would have too. So instead of being able to go to www.facebook.com. You'd have to go to 173.252.100.27. Instead of buying from www.amazone.com[/url=http://www.amazone.com/]. you'd buy from 207.171.166.252. I think you get the point.

The one thing that you'll have to understand is; the host file is not dead. Every Windows, Linux and Unix computer has a one, and it can be edited using notepad or any other text editor.
This How-To takes advantage of the fact that your computer has this host file, and we're going to change this files contents in an attempt to speed up your network. The way this works, is when you access a webpage, it reads the host file and sees if it has the answer, and if nothing is their than it does an Recursive/Iterative DNS query.

How to do this
Now, the location of this file is different on the platforms, so here are the possible places;

• Windows XP, Vista, 7 or 8? C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
• Unix/Linux? /etc/hosts

When you find said file, you're going to right click-> rename. Then you're going to add the file extension .txt
Don't worry; the file won't be damaged by changing the extension. And when we're done, you'll restore it back by deleting the .txt

Next: Now, you're going to open notepad or your text editor of choice, find some of your most used website. Now you're going to get their IP addresses. I suggest you get their IP then press tab and put their domain name beside them. There's a few ways to do this, but my favorite is to use command prompt an the ping.command. it should go something like this:



Here are a few examples of some popular websites and their IP address

• 173.252.100.27 = www.facebook.com[/url=http://www.facebook.com/].
• 173.194.77.103 = www.google.com[/url=http://www.google.com/]http://www.google.com/'>.
• 87.238.85.156 = http://www.amazone.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>http://www.facebook.com/'>www.amazone.comhttp://www.amazone.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>http://www.facebook.com/'>[/url=http://www.amazone.com/]http://www.amazone.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>.
• 204.101.73.251 = www.linustechtips.com[/url=http://www.linustechtips.com/]
• 98.142.103.33 = www.lifehacker.com[/url=http://www.lifehacker.com/]http://www.lifehacker.com/'>http://www.linustechtips.com/'>http://www.amazone.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>.

When you convert the hosts file to a text file and open it, you'll be greeted with something that looks like this;



When you put entries into this file, you have to separate them with at least one space, I prefer to use tab.

So, when you put in an entry, it should look like this;

173.194.77.103 http://www.google.com/'>http://www.lifehacker.com/'>http://www.linustechtips.com/'>http://www.amazone.com/'>www.google.comhttp://www.google.com/'>http://www.lifehacker.com/'>http://www.linustechtips.com/'>http://www.amazone.com/'>[/url=http://www.google.com/]

Then, if you want to add more, you just go to the next line, like this;

http://www.google.com/'>173.194.77.103 http://www.google.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>http://www.lifehacker.com/'>http://www.linustechtips.com/'>http://www.amazone.com/'>www.google.comhttp://www.google.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>http://www.lifehacker.com/'>http://www.linustechtips.com/'>http://www.amazone.com/'>[/url=http://www.google.com/]
204.101.73.251 http://www.linustechtips.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>http://www.lifehacker.com/'>www.linustechtips.comhttp://www.linustechtips.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>http://www.google.com/'>http://www.lifehacker.com/'>[/url=http://www.linustechtips.com/]

Another cool thing that you can do in the host file is give URLs local aliases. Now some people are probably thinking, "Now what in the world is this child taking about?" A local alias is essentially a way to cheat the system and use short URLs. Say you got to your email a lot, well you could make it so that when you type in mail/ it brings up your mail account. Here's what that entry would look like (I'll be using Live's mail URL)

65.54.186.77 login.live.com mail

Simple as that, by adding an addition space, and a word, you can assign any URL/IP address a local alias.
Now, to access this using the alias, go into your browser and type

http://mail/

And you're done!

Technically, this isn't really speeding up your internet, but, it will make your network more responsive with lower ping.

What do you think, should I write another How-To in the future on how to change your Default DNS and some other cool things I know how to do? Or should I stay away from writing altogether? Tell me what you think!

I also have a good prank that revolves around this, if enough people ask about it I'll post it.

[rufee]

Umm, if by any chance the ip changes and with google it might, then its quite pointless.

If you have a spare machine run your own DNS server (don't remember the distros).

Anyway its a good guide to understand how old networks worked :)

[azeotrope]

If you have decent internet and a decent DNS then you won't notice any improvement in response. A decent DNS server can give a response in around 50 ms if that which will hardly be noticable. Most browsers/OSs keep a DNS cache as well. The aliases thing can be handy though and is really the only reason to do this.

[Blade of Grass]

Yeah, I do realise that currently, it's not really necessary, but their are people with slow Internet, so it could help them.

Also, what's the chance of google changing its IP address, most websites use one address for the life of thier website, it would be like changing your name.

I'd say run your own DNS server would be even better.

This also helps if their are certain websites where you keep getting recursive queries that are handed to another DNS server. For me, when I go to www.NCIX.ca I get handed off to something like five different DNS servers, but by putting thier info into the hosts file, I don't get handed off to any, and I connect faster.

[Blade of Grass]

If you have decent internet and a decent DNS then you won't notice any improvement in response. A decent DNS server can give a response in around 50 ms if that which will hardly be noticable. Most browsers/OSs keep a DNS cache as well. The aliases thing can be handy though and is really the only reason to do this.

I have never heard of a OS or Browser doing a DNS cache. Some cache content for when you hit the back button, but I don't know any that store IP addresses.

[Dragontail]

If you have decent internet and a decent DNS then you won't notice any improvement in response. A decent DNS server can give a response in around 50 ms if that which will hardly be noticable. Most browsers/OSs keep a DNS cache as well. The aliases thing can be handy though and is really the only reason to do this.

open a command prompt and type "ipconfig /displaydns" without the quotation marks.

Edit

Under windows though

[Broseephus]

Entire OP should have consisted of.... "change dns to 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220"

That would have been much more helpful.

[rufee]

Also' date=' what's the chance of google changing its IP address, most websites use one address for the life of thier website, it would be like changing your name.[/quote']

I just pinged google.com and got a different IP from the one you stated, regional google domains also use a different IP.

Pinging your address gave me a 100 ms longer response then i got from pinging the address that is closer to me, when it comes to google or any other big website they have servers all around the planet and you connect to the one closest to you. So yeah somebody using your given IP's could get a worse experience then they already have.

This file is used as a makeshift firewall for programs that want to connect somewhere, they get re-routed to localhost or where ever you want.