All those who have AOL/Dialup:

You do know how slow it is, right? Well, some of the time it takes to find the page (before it starts to load) has to do with contacting a DNS server (domain name server), translating the name you typed in (www.whatever.com) into a number so it can be located on the internet.

So since AOL's DNS servers are probably slow since they are overworked, here's a workaround that you can do to completely bypass the DNS with sites you visit often.

Windows keeps a small file called the hosts file, which is like a small, local DNS server. By putting web site names and their corresponding IP numbers here, you could speed up the time it takes to load a page.

(Note this is completely safe, anything you do is completely reversable, but keep a backup handy in case you forget waht the original looked like.)

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1) Think of a site you visit often. Get a command prompt (start->prgs->accessories->MS-DOS prompt). Type in 'ping www.whatever.com', replacing whatever.com with the site you visit often (and without the quotes.) Then hit enter, and look for the number separated by for dots. Write it down.

Ex:
Code:
Pinging www.whatever.com [192.168.2.1] with 32 bytes of data:

See the number I was talking about? Its the one in brackets.

2) Now open up your hosts file with notepad (if you have Windows 95/98/98SE/ME, it's probably c:\windows\hosts; make sure it's NOT hosts.sam, that is only a sample. If you can't find it, search for it, and if it doesn't exist, create one in C:\windows. If you are running Windows NT or 2000, you should know about this anyway ).

Now type in that number on a separate line if there are other entries in there. Then next to it type in the site. Save it. You're done! Wasn't that easy? Repeat steps 1 and two for any other sties you want to. For the changes to take effect, restart aol or your browser (exit the prg and start it again), or to be sure, just restart your computer. If you're not sure how the hosts file should look, look at this example:

Code:
192.168.2.1 www.whatever.com
192.168.2.2 www.something.com

**IMPORTANT NOTES: Just make sure each entry is on a seperate line. Also, make sure you put the number before the address, not vice versa. And, copy the number EXACTLY, INCLUDING the dots. That's it!

-Mike