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OS X: Make your Mac load web pages 1000x faster

Apple’s core networking for OS X (Lion, Mountain Lion, etc) is famously poor. One of the (many) unfixed bugs is this:

“I go to a webpage (e.g. google.com) and my browser displays a message saying ‘Server not Found’. If I keep hitting Refresh, it never works. If I wait a few minutes and try again, it works”

This is entirely Apple’s fault. They aggressively (and incorrectly) cache “failed” lookups. And … because it’s Apple … you can’t turn it off. It’s been broken for at least 5 years now, which suggests they have no intention of fixing it.

But: you can “flush” it. Since it’s a cache (which are designed to auto-flush anyway), there’s no harm in doing this.

Solution: restart Apple’s DNS cache

  1. Open a Terminal window
  2. type: “sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder”
    • (you’ll need your admin password, annoyingly, because you’re ‘forcing’ Apple’s code to behave itself)
  3. Reload your webpage – works immediately

After the first time, you can repeat the command frequently without typing your password. Simply hit the “up” arrow (to re-type previous command) and Return to run it.

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