Global Internet Speedup Initiative Kicks Web Surfing into High Gear

Posted 08/31/2011 at 9:03am | by Paul Lilly

5

Comments

Print

Your Internet experience may feel faster than what it was a couple of days ago, and if so, that's by design. How so? If you're wearing a tin foil hat, it's probably because the government needs to stack up more evidence against you and decided to boost your connection speed. Bummer. For everyone else noticing a speed gain, it could be the result of the Global Internet Speedup initiative.

Here's the deal. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) feed Internet data to your PC and other connected devices based on the location of your Domain Name System (DNS) server. In many cases, your DNS server is far removed from the location of your PC, so it's not entirely tuned for performance.

The Global Internet Speedup improves upon the current architecture by routing page requests based on the location of the user and not just the user's OpenDNS or Google Public DNS server. It's a simple solution that uses open Internet standards among OpenDNS, Google, and leading CDNs to deliver faster webpage load times and quicker downloads.

"We’re very excited to team with Google and the world’s leading CDNs on such a significant improvement to the speed of the Internet," said OpenDNS CEO David Ulevitch. "The initiative we’ve partnered on is based on open standards that any other network can adopt, making this technology available to anyone. We’re proud to be leading the charge together with the world’s leading Internet companies and CDNs and we’re stoked to be delivering speed improvements to our more than 30 million users and thousands of enterprise businesses."

You may have already guessed the 'gotcha,' which is that you need to be using DNS servers belonging to OpenDNS or Google Public DNS, and accessing websites powered by a participating CDN for this initiative to have any effect whatsoever, at least for now. And on that note, a couple of handy links:

How To: Boost Your Web Browsing Performance Like an IT Pro Using DNS
How To: Speed Up, Customize, and Secure Firefox, Chrome, IE8, and Opera