In some other cases, a malware might be trying to redirect popular sites to a malicious one. So, the site you plan to revisit may no longer be using the address you have in your DNS cache. Sometimes, when website owners change location, they may have to change DNS servers as well. So, Why Clear Your DNS Cache?Īs mentioned earlier, different events can lead to your DNS cache becoming corrupted. Your local DNS then caches this information for easy navigation to sites you visited before without having to query the DNS server each time. So, it looks up the address on a DNS server, which in turn links it to the right IP address. When you type a website on your browser for the first time, your computer has no reference to it. However, your next visit to the same restaurant will be faster if you save the address. If you only have access to the phone book, it might take you longer to get the right address.

Imagine that a friend asked you to meet at a restaurant you’ve never been to.

But, you can resolve such problems by clearing your DNS cache. However, you may start experiencing connectivity issues if the local DNS cache becomes outdated or corrupted.Ī number of things can corrupt the local DNS cache, including viruses and network attacks. Since caching keeps the IP addresses you’ve queried, your load time is significantly faster. So, instead of rerouting your queries to DNS servers, the system answers them. In DNS caching, your browser or Operating System captures IP addresses you’ve visited recently and saves them in a database. Think of the DNS as a phone book or directory that indexes websites and their IP addresses. Windows, Mac OS, and Linux use Domain Name Servers (DNS) cache to save name resolution information.

Mac terminal commands display dns