Is it just me or do the pages load quicker after adding it to Hosts file?
It’s not just you. Changing the host file bypasses the public lookup usually accomplished over the internet.
Normal flow:
- go to www.freerepublic.com in browser
- browser checks knows entries in hosts file, finds nothing
- browser goes out to the internet
- domain name resolves at the domain registrar, which provides DNS lookup info
- browser checks DNS server for information
- browser uses provided info to load the site
Edited host file flow:
- go to www.freerepublic.com in browser
- browser checks known entries in hosts file, finds info
- browser uses provided info to load the site
So, many milliseconds are shaved off by mapping in your host file.
“But 20yearsofinternet,” you might ask, “why don’t we just add stuff to the host file all the time?”
Good question. That’s because the backend info changes from time-to-time (in some cases, like sites hosted on cheaper Amazon web services platforms, it changes a lot). Once an announcement is made that the problem is all resolved, everyone should undo the change so that if in 3 months from now the IP that FR resolves to should happen to change, nobody runs into problems.