network/DNS prefetch?

[shep]

Originally Posted by Oko

I would not comment anything based of webkit as it is not useful to me in any shape or form. We are at the point that there is not a single decent browser for UNIX.

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I am not sure it is entirely due to the browsers. I normally use FF and do not save any history or cookies. I set Xombrero to not save the history but cookies have to be manually deleted.

An eye opener for me was from my start page, the NYTimes + this site, I end up with more cookies than I can count. It appears that a particular pattern of cookies is often used to track users. From Xombrero wiki:

In some cases websites track visitors to their site using DNS by embedding large numbers of hostnames in their pages that require a DNS lookup. Almost every browser has DNS prefetch enabled by default, meaning that upon loading a new page all of the hostnames referenced in the page are looked up using DNS whether a visitor follows the links or not. At many sites this means doing hundreds of DNS lookups per page loaded, with most of them returning NX responses. Similarly, many browsers perform full link prefetching by default, which is downloading the content of all the embedded links, not just looking up their DNS. xombrero has both DNS and link prefetching disabled by default since these operations can be used to track users.

[IdOp]

I use these in about:config :

network.prefetch-next --> false
network.dns.disablePrefetch --> true

[shep]

@ocicat. I am interested in more discussion on network prefetch/dns prefetch and different ways to deal with it so feel free to split this thread after your previous post.

[Oko]

Originally Posted by shep

@ocicat. I am interested in more discussion on network prefetch/dns prefetch and different ways to deal with it so feel free to split this thread after your previous post.

+1

[Oko]

Originally Posted by IdOp

I use these in about:config :

network.prefetch-next --> false
network.dns.disablePrefetch --> true

Great tip!!!

[ocicat]

By request, this thread has been separated from its parent:

http://daemonforums.org/showthread.p...4672#post54672

We find that most members on this site mine the archives for previous content. Given that members may be at all levels of technical understanding, & given that English is not many members' first language, we ask that members keep discussion linear -- following the direction of a thread's original post.

This helps minimize confusion regardless of cause.

[shep]

The part that I find mind boggling is amount of cpu cycles devoted to tracking via cookie content. I had well over 200 cookies some of which looked redundent, "linkedin.com" vs ".linkedin.com", after visiting just two sites. None of the sites were "linkedin". The performance gap I was seeing between FF and Xombrero appears to have noticeably narrowed since disabling pre-fetching in FF.

I plan on keeping both, my biology background says that a diverse environment is good