Here's what Wikipedia says about Hosts files:
hosts (file) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you don't like Wikipedia, you can try the related links at the bottom of the page. :)
Unless you're in a situation in which your specific DNS server is extremely slow, the DNS request and response is an exponentially small fraction of the entire web page fetching process. If all of your pages lag and take time to load, that is most likely more of a bandwidth issue than a DNS issue. However, to rule it out, change your DNS server to something else like UltraDNS or Google's DNS server and see if that helps any.
Yeah, I'm using Google DNS, and I have tons of bandwith, but still lagging :P
Browser plugins? Maybe you can describe the lag a bit more in depth as that's a very subjective term.
Since you are using Chrome, it defiantly is not a DNS issue, Chrome maintains its own DNS cache. It also prefetches DNS records before you use them.
Can you describe in specific detail what the situations are in which the lag occurs and what exactly you're interpreting as lag? Basically walk us through every step of what happens.
Quote
lugins" and edited them into one 