98 Guy wrote in :

I've always scratched my head over the claim that a large hosts file can
bog a system down.


I can see why, as I said, but I don't know if that's even the reason others
have given. Maybe they just flooded theirs with domains and not IP's. DNS
resolution takes time, even more than file accesses.

It seems to be true that Win-XP (and higher?) have problems with large
hosts files (I think anything larger than 135 kb) and on the MVPS-hosts
web-site they say that the "DNS Server Service" running on NT-based
systems has issues (or is outright incompatible with) large hosts files
- and they recommend that the service be disabled. I really don't see
the benefit of running that service (on the XP systems that I set up at
$Dayjob) and it's one of many services that I disable.

As far as performance on a win-98 system, I have to say that I can
detect no performance degradation by having a hosts file pushing 1 mb in
size.

If DNSBench.exe is an accurate tool when it comes to measuring DNS
performace and hosts-file interference, then again the fastest servers
are operating in the 10 to 20 ms range - pretty much the theoretical
minimum for my DSL connection.



Ok, sounds fair enough. While file accesses are 'slow', context is
everything. Their speed is usually considered in the context of local API
behaviour, not network delays.