DNS Client

Windows Vista Service Details

Description:

The DNS Client service is not needed to connect to the internet. It is used for DNS client lookup caching. However, browsers already have DNS caching built into them. Some people have mentioned that this will slow down your browsing experience as you will have to re-retrieve DNS entries for all web requests, but I find that 2 levels of caching the same data is a bit silly, as the browsers can manage this on their own. You can up your DNS browser cache from within firefox (and probably IE), or use an extension such as FasterFox which ups it by default (if memory serves).

Service Description:

Resolves and caches DNS names for this computer. If this service is stopped, this computer will not be able to resolve DNS names and locate Active Directory domain controllers.

Consequences of Stopping:

If disabled DNS names will continue to be resolved but they won't be cached. Your internet will continue to work just fine. Can slow down browsing, hypothetically, but I have seen no difference in network speeds. Also some ipconfig commands will complain about errors (as there is no cache to clear)
All services listed in 'Required For' will be unable to function

Depends on:

None

Required for: