How can I stop 404s from favicon.ico without a favicon.ico?

Question

How can I stop requests for favicon.ico without having a favicon.ico? It wastes resources serving a 404 and fills up logs with 404s. Right now I put in a dummy favicon.ico file but I would prefer a method of just telling browsers don't request favicon.

Solution

You haven't specified a web server however you appear to be involved in .net so I'm going to assume it's IIS

In which case you can filter your logs using something like this http://learn.iis.net/page.aspx/692/advanced-logging-for-iis---log-filtering/

You can do the same on most servers

You can't actually stop browsers requesting the image. However if you do have a favicon it can be cached by the browser which can reduce the number of requests coming in.