How can I enable or disable subnet prioritization on a client machine?

John Savill

October 24, 2002

1 Min Read
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A. In the FAQ titled "What is DNS round robin and subnet prioritization?", I explained how subnet prioritization cuts down on network traffic but defeats the load-balancing effect of the DNS server round robin. If balancing the load across the hosts is more important than traffic management, you might want to disable subnet prioritization. To do so, perform the following steps:

  1. Start a registry editor (e.g., regedit.exe) on each client machine.

  2. Navigate to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesDnscacheParameters registry subkey.

  3. From the Edit menu, select New, DWORD Value.

  4. Enter the name PrioritizeRecordData, then press Enter.

  5. Double-click the new value, set it to 0, then click OK.

  6. Close the registry editor.

  7. Reboot the machine for the change to take effect.

To reenable subnet prioritization, either delete the PrioritizeRecordData registry value or set this value to 1.

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