How-To: Boost Your Web Browsing Performance Like an IT Pro Using DNS
How-To: Boost Your Web Browsing Performance Like an IT Pro Using DNS
Posted 04/17/2009 at 10:30am
| by Justin Kerr
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You are reading Maximum PC because you love to build, and tweak your rig. We will gladly spend hours trying to nudge a few extra clock cycles out of our CPUs, but why do so many of us refuse to touch our network settings? The vast majority of users simply plug in their network cables, cross their fingers, and sacrifice an AOL CD to the gods who keep Conficker at bay. Truth be told, without going into too much depth up front, there is a really easy way to boost your surfing speed and it requires very little effort at all. This same tool gives you the ability to customize your internet experience further by creating URL shortcuts, or even filtering content, all without extra software.
The tool we are referring to is Domain Name System, or DNS for short. In a nutshell, DNS is your phone book for the internet. It helps translate a friendly internet domain like www.maximumpc.com, into IP address that our computer needs to find servers on the internet. Each time you visit a new website, a DNS query is issued in the background, and you’re none the wiser. Internet service providers supply DNS to all their customers, but these servers tend to be overpopulated, and certainly aren’t a priority to them because it’s difficult for the average user to measure performance. Power users are intimately familiar with how to benchmark raw connection speeds, but before that even becomes a factor, your machine needs IP address which is supplied by your DNS. Even if your smoking fast Fiber Optic connection can handle 18 Mbps, if your ISP’s DNS server wastes several seconds looking up your favorite website, you connection may be sitting in limbo when you could be surfing instead.
Interested in finding out how to improve the responsiveness of your connection and learning more about your DNS options? Read on.
What You Need:
• A PC running Windows, Mac, or Linux
• A .zip extraction tool such as 7-Zip (Free)
• Dig DNS Benchmarking Tool & Patch (Free)
Time: 30 Minutes
1.) Find a new DNS provider
This step isn’t as easy as it sounds. There are more than 11.9 million DNS name servers in the world today, and some of these represent a significant security threat. You would think that if someone was going to all the trouble of setting up a dedicated DNS server they would keep it up to date. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case. Some were simply commissioned years ago, and haven’t been touched or updated since launch. It’s worth noting however, that sticking with your ISP’s free default offering isn’t always the best choice either. They are often one of the worst offenders when it comes to defending against new vulnerabilities. Teaching you how to test a DNS server’s performance, and double check their security is something that we will cover in depth later in this article.
The sheer number of choices is overwhelming, but for the lazy readers amongst us who looking for a quick recommendation, OpenDNS is a safe bet. This is a company that has created its entire business around providing you with a flawless, and fast DNS performance. They also offer tons of great customization options which we will cover later, but they aren’t the only guys in town. If you’d rather look around for alternatives, start by surfing over to dnsserverlist.org and take a look at the top three recommended servers for your location. These won’t always necessarily be servers with the lowest ping; there is much more to DNS performance then just your physical distance. The server’s ability to resolve domain names varies greatly based on the platform they are using, and even how busy they are. The recommendations this service makes, takes some of those factors into account.
Select two of the three recommender servers, and get ready to jump to the next step. Don’t worry about the security or speed of your selections just yet. We have a test to address both of these concerns later on.
2.) Changing Your DNS the Easy Way Through Your OS
The easiest and fastest way to get up and running with you new DNS settings is to simply key them into your network cards configuration within the OS. This will get you up and running quickly, but I would only recommend this if you only have a single machine in your network, or if your computer is directly connected to your cable modem without a router. Not having a router is the security equivalent of licking the handrail at a subway station, but if you really don’t have one, this is the way to go. Keep in mind if you ever format your machine, or install a different network card, you will have to go through these steps again. Find the step by step instructions for configuring your OS below. The final step will give you the DNS settings to plug in for OpenDNS, but if you’d rather not use them, you can enter your own choice at the end based on what you decided in Step 1.
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Still listening to Ace of Base and can’t find your OS? Click here.
3.) Changing Your DNS the Permanent Way Through Your Router
Using your router is the best way to implement your new DNS selection. This allows any machine, or device that connects to your router to enjoy the benefits or content filtering that you have configured.
In general, you can access most consumer routers by opening a new tab in your browser and typing either 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1. You’ll know this worked correctly when you are prompted for your user name and password to login. If you lost this information, don’t despair, just look for any type of reset button on the device itself to restore it to defaults. Look for a tab named Network or Configuration and look for the section that allows you to enter your DNS. Once done, simply click save and reboot your router.
Here is a list of common routers, and instructions on how to reach your DNS settings.
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favori (not verified)
June 15, 2009 at 4:17am
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seo (not verified)
June 01, 2009 at 4:11am
In general, you can access most consumer routers by opening a new tab in your browser and typing either 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1.
You’ll know this worked correctly when you are prompted for your user
name and password to login. If you lost this information, don’t
despair, just look for any type of reset button on the device itself to
restore it to defaults. Look for a tab named Network or Configuration and look for the section that allows you to enter your DNS. Once done, simply click save and reboot your router.ilaçlama haşere ilaçlama istanbul ilaçlama kene ilaçlama bit ilaçlama fare ilaçlama
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Psychic51
May 08, 2009 at 10:45pm
The DNS benchmarking tool made by Gibson Research Corporation mentioned above is working now. I suggest using it to test your connection.
I use Quest DSL. It tested out to be by far the fastest.
In order to properly test the Quest DNS server I had to enter the IP addresses manually. If you're using a router you will find your actual DNS server there. It should be found under Connection Status.
I entered both the primary and the secondary DNS into the benchmark tool. both of them tested out to be the fastest out of any servers that the tool tests.
I also discovered something. By default Windows is set to automatically obtain a DNS. It picks the router. The router also gets it's DNS automatically. It should look to your ISPs DNS server. This means that every request must be processed by the router. If I cut out the router and enter the Quest DNS servers into Windows manually then I seem to get faster page loads.
The DNS Benchmark showed my router IP as 192.168.0.1. It's marked by a solid gold dot and it's named Home. If your router shows up as being slower than your ISPs DNS servers then you should benifit by entering the IPs for the DNS manually as well.
darrellfjohnson
April 26, 2009 at 1:07pm
Just tried it, and it seems to work pretty well. I will have to do some more testing on it, but it reduced my ping a little bit and of course passed all of the security tests. I'll be using OpenDNS on all routers that I set up now.
RocknRoll
April 24, 2009 at 11:35pm
This worked awsome! My ISP's DNS failed the security test miserably!
I also reduced the quary time from 400+ ms to less then half that, the browser feels way snappier now.
Awsome guide, if the magazine is anything like this, I should definatly consider subscribing.
ajuhawk
April 24, 2009 at 5:14am
Overall this works out really well and I'm happily using OpenDNS...but I ran into an issue where I could no longer ping or remote into computers on my LAN. After a bit of research I discovered this is because the names were going out to the DNS server to be resolved instead of staying on my LAN. I don't know exactly why this happens and didn't when I was using my ISP's DNS servers, but if you run into this, it can be fixed (if you're using OpenDNS anyway). You have to go into the VPN exceptions section (can't recall the exact name at the moment) and setup "your domain" as an exception so it'll resolve the name locally. Once you know what's going on, finding your domain is pretty easy - when you do a ping (i.e. ping mycomputer) it'll come back with something like "pinging mycomputer.isp.domain.com" so you just add an exception for "isp.domain.com", wait the three minutes and try again... you may have to also add "domain.com" so just keep going until you get a ping and ip from your LAN.
Hope this saves someone some time as it took me awhile to figure out why my WHS wasn't talking to my computer, etc...
DiRTDOG
April 19, 2009 at 3:17pm
I would like to give this a shot but OpenDNS doesnt seem to support my DLink DIR-625 does it work on any router?
Fenthic
April 18, 2009 at 9:03am
I have been using openDNS for close to a year now and have no problems with it. I started using it after my ISP had a very bad case of fox.com. On any compter or any device that tried to access the internet was redirected to fox.com on about 80% of all pages visited. So i switched to openDNS and have had no issues since. I tried a month or so ago the DNS servers of my ISP again and while alot better I still get the occasional reroute to fox.
Mr Pockets151
April 17, 2009 at 2:02pm
searching for recommended DNS and OpenDns. Compare the difference for myself. I am going to be using the router option-question: Since I'm changing the DNS inside my router, will all my other OSes( triple boot WIN 7, XP, Ubuntu), be covered?
To the last nugget!
MaxFan
April 17, 2009 at 7:41am
OpenDNS saved my sanity. Once upon a time, I was a subscriber to Time Warner Cable for my internet service. I like many others on TWC played online games (including WoW) but during those Dark troublesome days I would log in to my favorite games online and after a few minutes of play I would start getting Ridiculous ping times sometimes in the multi thousand millisecond pings. I reported this to TWC to NC Soft to Blizzard to just about everybody. Did the trace routes troubleshot till my eyes were bloodshot my hair falling out (still is but its slowed considerably since then :D) and my hands were raw and bloody from typing tracert -d login.gameservername.com at a command prompt.
Finally I got fed up to my eyeballs with TWC after having resolved the issue ( a bad actor server in the dallas Fort Worth telco area) and reported same to TWC NOTHING was done to correct it. The Hops on the network all went star for tcp at hop 7 out of 30 and in the multi thousands of ms and TWC had this info and did squat. I switched from TWC to windstream For a while life was good and then all of a sudden I started getting the same kind of behavior from windstream. More sleepless nights troubleshooting. Then I read a forum post on world of warcrafts forums talking about OpenDNS. I went to their site and read up on them. changed the dns entry on my from auto to OpenDNS servers and the problem went away. Immediately. did a tracert out to us.login.worldofwarcraft.com after doing a release renew through ipconfig. No more hop 7 dallas fort worth area hops! I was being routed through Philidelphia to Boston (im on the east coast and the datacenter for one of my realms is in Boston) ping never went above 38-40ms on any hop!!!!! ping time in WoW was down to an acceptable 128-145ms on a busy night and down to 74-75ms on a off peak hour run.
I have also had less intrusion attacks inbound to my router since begining to use OpenDNS for my Domain Name Server needs. KickAss! 9 of 10 +SpeedRacer: Avoids Dallas Fort Worth area att Backbone, Improved speed and ping immediately and immensely, Secure and feature rich client. -SpeedingTicket: sometimes interacts strangely with Kaspersky Anti Virus
Kaasiim
April 17, 2009 at 8:15am
Well based on what I've read so far on this site, the last thing TWC gives a rat's ass about is its customers!
Thanks for the heads up regarding WoW, despite all that I'm learning, its obvious that I still have a very long way to go.
Oh yeah, kick ass article, can't wait to put what I've learned to use when I get home.
Yusonice
April 17, 2009 at 1:07am
For me using openDNS saved 20ms BUT when testing dig net. N S timing using openDNS was over 200ms but using default was 67ms.... i guess ill stick to obtain dns automatically.
Justin.Kerr
April 17, 2009 at 12:26pm
Try some alternatives. OpenDNS as we mentioned is fast, but it is also popular. Find yourself another less populated server if raw speed is your goal. You also inspired me to add another few sentences to the end of my benchmarking paragraph. Make sure you are testing your DNS server's during peak hours, typically this is the early evening. Your ISP may give you good results now, but buckle under the weight of their subscriber base. You might also just be lucky enough to have an ISP with excellent DNS server, with all the choices out there maybe your lucky! But you won't know till you try.
Bless
April 19, 2009 at 7:41am
I know that this is asking a lot, but I was wondering if it is possible for maxpc to provide us with 3 top dns server instead of just 1?
since it is nearly impossible to try all the 1.9 mil dns server.
by the way great how-do article though.
thx
Justin.Kerr
April 19, 2009 at 9:18am
In the article, we suggest checking out http://www.dnsserverlist.org/ . This will give you three seperate independant recommendations aside from OpenDNS to try out.
Vegan
April 16, 2009 at 10:36pm
I'll save the OpenDNS users the trouble and say that it passed the Spoof Test with flying colors.
Alexxandre
October 18, 2009 at 12:46am
You can also use a DNS server on your home server, using your old PC.
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