
See Reasons Not to Change DNS Servers below for more details.

However, you may experience unexpected issues if you set the servers on your Mac, especially if you use it at work. You could also make the change on your Mac that may save just a little extra time since your Mac will ask the DNS servers directly rather than asking the router which then asks the DNS servers. One is to make the change on your router this may give you the best results since every device using that router will get the benefit of the change. If you have decided to change your DNS settings, you have a couple of options. If you add up the name resolution speed difference for every domain you visit or use, you can see how changing your DNS can speed up your internet browsing experience, shaving seconds off of a page load time. Many sites include images or other resources from a number of domains and subdomains.

In the above example, OpenDNS was faster than the default DNS server by 136ms. Measure OpenDNS server name resolutionĬhanging your DNS servers has the potential to speed up your internet browsing experience, particularly if you surf or visit a large number of sites. This query and response was much faster: 43 milliseconds. To test a different DNS server for name resolution, type dig and press Return, putting the DNS server’s IP address-in this example, one of OpenDNS’ servers-after the symbol. Measure default DNS server name resolution In this case, I’m using my home router as the DNS server and it took 179 milliseconds.

To test your default DNS server, open Terminal and type dig and press Return. You can measure DNS resolution time by using the dig command in Terminal and looking for the Query time. If you are using your ISP’s default DNS servers, you may get better speed and more reliable service by changing to a different DNS service. When changing DNS server settings, you’ll want to make sure that you specify at least two servers, although you can include more if you want. Personally, I prefer OpenDNS (208.67.220.220 and 208.67.222.222) and Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4).Įvery major DNS service has at least primary and secondary servers to ensure that requests will always be answered. There are a number of third-party DNS servers available as well. Your home router is likely set by default to use your ISP’s DNS servers, which may or may not be very reliable. In fact, DNS requests can take as little as 40 milliseconds! Public DNS Servers If the page needs resources from another domain, as many do, the computer will go through the whole process again for each domain or subdomain.įrankly, it’s amazing that this whole process, called resolution, takes less than a second. The computer initiates a connection to that IP address and continues with loading the page.The router receives a reply from a public DNS server and sends that on to your computer among other details, it includes an IP address such as 190.93.242.181.If other devices have previously requested the Tuts+ Hub, the router may have the result cached already and may skip this step. The router asks a DNS server for the IP address.Type into the web browser the computer asks the router for the IP address for so it can connect to the server.Connect to a wireless network the router tells your computer what DNS server to use, usually the router itself.

Every device on the public Internet has an IP address DNS is like a phonebook that associates a domain name, for instance, with the server’s IP address, 190.93.242.181. In this tutorial, I’ll show you what DNS is and some tips you can use to be safer on the web.ĭNS stands for Domain Name System and is a protocol, or language, that computers use when talking to each other. When you open your web browser and type in to find something interesting to learn, your computer is able to find a server with the IP address 190.93.242.181. Among other technologies, a protocol called DNS helps your computer find that server.
