DNS Lookup Optimization and the Host Cache in mysql

DNS Lookup Optimization and the Host Cache in mysql ,

The server performs host name resolution using the thread-safe gethostbyaddr_r() and gethostbyname_r() calls if the operating system supports them. Otherwise, the thread performing the lookup locks a mutex and calls gethostbyaddr() and gethostbyname() instead. In this case, no other thread can resolve host names that are not in the host cache until the thread holding the mutex lock releases it.

The server uses the host cache for several purposes:

->By caching the results of IP-to-host name lookups, the server avoids doing a DNS lookup for each client connection. Instead, for a given host, it needs to perform a lookup only for the first connection from that host.

->The cache contains information about errors that occur during the connection process. Some errors are considered “blocking.” If too many of these occur successively from a given host without a successful connection, the server blocks further connections from that host. The max_connect_errors system variable determines the number of permitted errors before blocking occurs.

To unblock blocked hosts, flush the host cache by issuing a FLUSH HOSTS statement or executing a mysqladmin flush-hosts command.