- Joined
- Apr 26, 2013
- Messages
- 14,186
- Name
- Mack
Have trouble surfing? Certain sites bog down? It might not be your machine or the speed of your connection.
It might be your DNS.
There's a free utility for Windows, Linux and Mac called Namebench. It evaluates the speed at which a connection can resolve a certain number of popular web addresses (it's configureable)
For example. I have Frontier FiOS. Ever since they bought FiOS from Verizon, the speeds have stayed okay, but the "feel" of the Internet is just a lot slower. I decided to see if the issue was the DNS.
I installed Namebench, selected a few DNSes that I wanted checked like OpenDNS and Google DNS (you can google those numbers, google's is 8.8.8.8) as well as had it check all known national DNS and regional DNS and ran the test . Took between 5-10 minutes where I needed to just let the computer have the connection.
The results really surprised me.
It turned out that the DNS provided by my ISP was 201% slower than if I used OpenDNS!!! That means that if I go to a page with a lot of links, each link will take that much longer to resolve using my ISPs DNS! Well, I reconfigured my router using the OpenDNS router and...
HOLY COW!!!
It's like every device in my house got an upgrade. My iPhone 6 was loading mmo-champion and Facebook (two really tough sites on load times) almost immediately! My kids have phones from the 6s to the 4 and all of them noticed a huge difference...not in the overall speed, but in the snappiness. Ads, especially, don't seem to take forever to resolve.
I know that as we look for ways to enjoy the streams and vids and content of the season, this may help some folks.
This was just an intro as I'm on my phone. I can go into more depth if folks are interested.
It might be your DNS.
There's a free utility for Windows, Linux and Mac called Namebench. It evaluates the speed at which a connection can resolve a certain number of popular web addresses (it's configureable)
For example. I have Frontier FiOS. Ever since they bought FiOS from Verizon, the speeds have stayed okay, but the "feel" of the Internet is just a lot slower. I decided to see if the issue was the DNS.
I installed Namebench, selected a few DNSes that I wanted checked like OpenDNS and Google DNS (you can google those numbers, google's is 8.8.8.8) as well as had it check all known national DNS and regional DNS and ran the test . Took between 5-10 minutes where I needed to just let the computer have the connection.
The results really surprised me.
It turned out that the DNS provided by my ISP was 201% slower than if I used OpenDNS!!! That means that if I go to a page with a lot of links, each link will take that much longer to resolve using my ISPs DNS! Well, I reconfigured my router using the OpenDNS router and...
HOLY COW!!!
It's like every device in my house got an upgrade. My iPhone 6 was loading mmo-champion and Facebook (two really tough sites on load times) almost immediately! My kids have phones from the 6s to the 4 and all of them noticed a huge difference...not in the overall speed, but in the snappiness. Ads, especially, don't seem to take forever to resolve.
I know that as we look for ways to enjoy the streams and vids and content of the season, this may help some folks.
This was just an intro as I'm on my phone. I can go into more depth if folks are interested.
