[ILUG] odd firefox/mozilla behaviour

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Frank Duignan (frank.duignan at gmail.com):

> Was wondering why slashdot was soooo slow when I noticed that it was waiting
> for a connection to www.google-analytics.com.  This only happens with
> firefox/mozilla.
> It does not happen with konqueror or lynx.  Anyway, I simply put an entry in
> my
> hosts file along these lines:
> 127.0.0.1               www.google-analytics.com
> and suddenly all is sweet (there is no webserver running on localhost)
> Anyone shed any light on why mozilla/firefox hangs around on this?  Firefox
> 1.06 btw.

It's a small bit of Javascript, effectively a "Web bug".  Google
Analytics is what used to be the separate firm & marketing/advertising
"metrics" product Urchin, recently gobbled up by Google.

I've added google-analytics.com to the growing list of junk domains my
nameserver resolves locally (along with lots of other "analytics"
domains such as those of Webtrends, WebSideStory AKA Hitbox, and
Omniture), doing for my entire LAN what you've accomplished at your
machine in /etc/hosts, referencing this handy zonefile:

$TTL 86400
;Generic make-advertisers-go-away zonefile.  Put YOUR IP address in the A line,
;and YOUR nameserver name in the NS line.
@       IN      SOA     ns1.linuxmafia.COM.  rick.deirdre.NET. (
                        2005112300              ; serial
                        7200                    ; refresh 3 hours
                        3600                    ; retry 1 hour
                        2419200                 ; expire 1000 hours
                        86400                   ; negative TTL 24 hours
                        )               
;
                IN      NS      ns1.linuxmafia.com.
*               IN      A       198.144.195.186