Tips for speeding up your internet experience

Even though Internet speeds are getting better and better, any nerd knows that we’re always looking for things to make our online experience faster. First, a quick primer about how your computer communicates with any other computer (local or on the Internet)…

iStock_000019531179XSmallWhenever you do anything involving communicating with another system, your computer has to look up the “location” of the destination server – it will begin by looking to see if it has a reference to the destination in its own, local “hosts” file – think of the hosts file as your personal address book. If it doesn’t see a reference to your requested destination there then it will query whatever DNS server(s) – the “public yellow pages,” to carry through the analogy – are specified in your network configuration.

Here are two things you can do (one for each of the afore-mentioned steps) to improve the responsiveness of your online experience:

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