Sick Of Your Slow Internet Connection? OpenDNS Solves!

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 founder 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 free alternative.

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.

OpenDNS Cache

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
  • <li>208.67.220.220</li></strong>

You might be surprised.

For more information, visit www.opendns.com.