MOBILE DEVICE DNS OPTIMIZATION

When a mobile device interacts with a network service, synchronous DNS resolution can significantly impact user experience due to lossy or moderate-high latency conditions. Network services that rely on low-TTL DNS records for failover require a client to frequently resolve the service's host name. It is undesirable to block on these frequent resolutions. In an implementation, user activity on a mobile device is monitored to determine whether the user is engaged in an activity that would contact a server. If such an activity is in progress, then DNS requests to resolve the server's host name are periodically generated to make sure the server's IP address is cached. In an implementation, if a request to communicate with a server fails, the DNS cache expires the entry for that server so that a new DNS request can resolve the server's IP address in case the server's IP address has changed.