TreeWalk DNS

gm_xone

Does anyone use or know anything about TreeWalk :question:

I experience a noticeable delay in a number of websites loading, occasionally not at all, even though I’m on 1Mb broadband. It’s been suggested that this is likely to be a DNS issue, though my ISP denies there’s a problem at their end. However, this has only become an issue for me since changing my ISP recently.

So someone has said that I should try using TreeWalk.
I’ve read the information and the faq’s but I must admit I don’t fully understand what the software does and if there’s any downsides to using it.

Any help or suggestions, including alternatives (spyware and cost free ) would be appreciated.
TIA
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Chippy_Minton

I haven't used TreeWalk myself, but from reading the FAQs, it is a program which acts as a local Domain Name Server (DNS) on your PC, replacing the DNS which your ISP uses.

When you request a page from a website, e.g. forums.moneysavingexpert.com, your browser goes to a DNS which translates the name to the site's IP address, in this case 69.10.158.140, connects to that address and loads the requested page.

The idea behind TreeWalk is that because it's running on your PC, the name lookup is faster than going to a remote DNS and therefore you can rule out problems with the DNS lookup which your ISP normally does.

Note however that remote DNS lookup is the shortest and fastest part of the process of requesting a web page. The delays you're seeing are more likely to be due to the website, your ISP, or any part of the network in between being slow or busy,

bbb_uk

I agree with Chippy_Minton.

One thing to note is that I'm almost certain that WinXP operates it's own local DNS cache anyhow which would possibly makes this software you mention kindof useless. I know older version of Windows never had a DNS cache.

I say almost certain as I'm pretty sure I read that on a M$ article somewhere!! Can anyone clarify this?

gm_xone

Thanks for the info.

I decided to download and install TreeWalk.

Have been using it for most of today. Now when I click on links, websites start to load almost immediately. Previously there would be a delay of between 3-6 seconds before anything happened.
So general surfing between different pages and websites has become significantly quicker.
I'm currently using IE6 on Win XP Home. Haven't tried it with Firefox yet.

Mr Skint,
I have tried forcing a DNS flush in windows on a number of occasions, but this made no difference even in the short term.

I'll stick to using TreeWalk meantime as I'm impressed with the results I'm seeing. Hopefully there won't be any negatives.
Any further comments & ideas would be most welcome!
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