You just proved my point :)  You are confusing maximum response time with average response time.  I agree 1s is unacceptably long for the *AVERAGE* case, therefore `options timeout:1` is not the correct solution.   In contrast a local DNS cache will robustly handle the case where one of the DNS servers in `resolv.conf` is dead, because even though the initial response will take 5s, all subsequent responses will be near instant, so the average response time will be far better.  And if any of the applications can not handle a *maximum* response time of 5s then something is definitely wrong with them anyway.