I don't know if anyone here can help, but there are a few knowledgeable types :-)

I've noticed (not just now, but also with past linux installs) that my name lookups in linux are always way slower than those in windows. After some research, I went through the steps to disable IPv6, and it's made a small difference. However, I still see an excessive amount of "Looking up www.google.com..." in my browser status bar. This shouldn't happen.

Why is this? I can't blame my ISP's name servers because it works great in windows. I'd like to not blame my router, because both my windows and linux box are using it as their gateway, so presumably, performance should be the exact same. So, maybe it's still my ubuntu box. I have disabled IPv6 in the modprobe aliases file the way I was supposed to, and also did it in firefox, but still no dice.

The next thing for me to try is to give OpenDNS a chance and see if it's any better. But, I can't help but think that the problem is just that my own box doesn't properly handle caching.

Oh yeah speaking of which: NSCD wasn't installed, so I installed it, and when I checked the config, I noticed this:

Code:
# hosts caching is broken with gethostby* calls, hence is now disabled
# per default.  See /usr/share/doc/nscd/NEWS.Debian.
        enable-cache            hosts           no
Aha! Is there a non-broken caching mechanism that is solid? If so, why doesn't it come standard with Gutsy?