We propose a simple and practical speed-up technique, which can be combined with every distance vector routing algorithm based on shortest paths, allowing to reduce the total number of messages sent by that algorithm. We combine the new technique with two algorithms known in the literature: DUAL, which is part of CISCO's widely used EIGRP protocol, and the recent DUST, which has been shown to be very effective on networks with power law node degree distribution. We give experimental evidence that these combinations lead to an important gain in terms of the number of messages sent by DUAL and DUST at the price of a little increase in terms of space occupancy per node.