I was having problems with Google chrome. I’m on PacBell -> SBC -> I mean ATT DSL here
in California. For some reason, after a little while, the browser would start failing on all sorts
of URLs. After experimenting a while, I noticed that it was due to the DNS resolver on my
Windows XP box. It was negatively caching a lot of entries. This means that it tried to lookup
some name (like www.wikipedia.com), and then couldn’t get an answer. So the resolver then
remembers that it never got an answer and for the next 5-15 minutes immediately responds to Google chrome with a ‘no such name’ response, without asking the internets.
I could test my theory easily by doing a ‘ipconfig /flushdns’ in a
CMD shell window (or what they used to call a DOS prompt). Every time I did that, the page that wasn’t
working would load. Still, if the images on the page were on a different domain… they would break.
I got frustrated and started digging into the problem.
I did some searching and found that Chrome has this neat new feature called
DNS Prefetching to
improve the perceived performance of web browsing. Essentially, it tries to lookup all the DNS
names on a web page while you are on it. After I flushed the DNS ‘one more time…’, and then
disabled this feature in the options… everything started working great.
I don’t have time tonight to diagnose where the problem lies, but hopefully this will get
resolved in the future.
(p.s. this was written in a more layman style, since some of my posts get read by people trying
to solve a particular problem. apologies if this was a bit too wordy for the 3 highly technical readers
out there)
The crossover has begun, all that has to happen now is mass market adoption. When you see this in low-end machines, there
will be huge changes in software design. For example, remember when you used to worry about non-24 bit video displays.
The SFBC is happy to announce that after seven years of slogging, the federal Bicycle Commuter Benefit suddenly became a reality last week as part of the $850 billion bailout bill signed by the President on Friday. The “Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008″ contains language (scroll to p. 205) that will amend the U.S. Tax Code to permit employers to reimburse employees, tax free, for “reasonable” expenses related to bike commutes, including bike and equipment purchases, repairs, and storage if the bicycle is used as a “substantial part” of the commuter’s trip to work for the month. The benefit option will go into effect for tax year 2009 (so start saving those receipts come January). Thanks to Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer and Senator Ron Wyden for their years of work on this initiative (though, as it happens, neither Blumenauer nor Wyden voted in favor of the massive bailout bill!).
