There’s a wide variety of things that will limit your online experience, a pretty common problem is simply lack of download and upload bandwidth, or hogging of same - but there’s another thing: DNS latency. OpenDNS, a service run by the founders of EveryDNS, might be just what you need.
Every time you want to access sites via their hostmasks, e.g. ‘www.google.com’ or ‘www.diggdot.us’, rather than their actual ‘names’ (IP addresses), e.g. 64.233.187.99, 64.71.156.11 - a query is sent to your DNS server asking, “What is Google.com?” - and it’s surprising how much slower the page load time can become because of that initial query, regardless of what connection you might have. Some ISP DNS servers have very poor respond times, ultimately leading to slower browsing, but fortunately there’s a solution.
If you use OpenDNS, you let their dedicated servers in various locations respond to your DNS requests instead of your ISP, and there’s a good chance they’ll respond a hell of a lot faster.
If you’re having applications hang with the indication that they’re looking for some host, e.g. Firefox saying “Looking for www.google.com…”, you should really try this out.
Other bonuses include automatic spelling correction, e.g. www.craigslist.og will take you to the .org site - Their server also blocks DNS requests to known phishing sites so your credit card information won’t be stolen.
Try changing your DNS server settings on either your computer or router to the following IP addresses (the OpenDNS servers) and check if it has a positive effect - you don’t need a login, specific operating system or anything like so, it works everywhere:
- 208.67.222.222
- 208.67.220.220
You might be surprised.
For more information, visit www.opendns.com.
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Sweet!
-david (from OpenDNS)
November 1st, 2006, at 8:23 pm #cool thanks for the heads-up
December 30th, 2006, at 10:56 pm #How do I know you won’t redirect me to a phishing site when you have a critical mass of users/victims? No thanks.
December 31st, 2006, at 5:36 am #I guess it’s a matter of trust.
If it’s the DNS addresses in my original post you’re worried about, just go to opendns.com, and hit Get Started to get the official data.
December 31st, 2006, at 10:36 am #Wow… the boost is bigger than I thought, thanks for the heads-up!
January 4th, 2007, at 3:52 pm #Simply a must-have for speed-freaks
-Brian
January 4th, 2007, at 4:21 pm #