Optimize Windows DNS cache management

DNS (Domain Name System) allows you to establish the IP address (Internet Protocol) made from 4 octets (for example: 192.168.3.34) and a domain name (for example: google.com).

It is also possible to input in the address bar of your internet browser the IP address of a site, for example “generation-nt.com” has the IP address of “83.243.23.80”. This will also work with all other websites, such as Google, Yahoo!, YouTube, Microsoft or even your default homepage.

The cache of DNS converted pages can take a while, with the default under Windows being 5 minutes. Also, you may also have some bad DNS conversions that will send you to an inaccessible web page. It is possible to disable this caching, but there is also a solution that is better and that is to change the cache update to one minute for example.

First of all you will need to start the Windows XP registry editor by clicking “Start”, “Run”, and typing “regedit” followed by the OK button.

Once you are in the registry, go to the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters\

Select the “Parameters” folder in the left hand window and then look in the right hand window. Right click on the empty space with the mouse and from the drop down menu that appears select “New” and “DWORD Value”.

A new entry will become visible and you will need to change its name and value. To change the name you can right click on it and select “Rename” from the drop down menu. To change the value you will need to select “Edit” from this same drop down menu. You will need to name this new key “Negative Cache Time” and provide it with a decimal value of “60”. This will effectively reduce the validation time of the cache from 5 minutes to 1 minute (60 seconds).

If you don’t want to edit the registry yourself for fear of making a mistake you can download these reg files which will make the changes for you.

Change the DNS cache time to 60 seconds (optimization)
Change the DNS cache time to 300 seconds (default value)