Open DNS and its benefits - Page 3

looselipsuk · 05-01-2008, 22:02

Might be a silly question.
I have a wireless router. Should I change the settings on PC and wireless router, or just the wireless router?

05-01-2008, 22:06

Quote:

Originally Posted by looselipsuk

Might be a silly question.
I have a wireless router. Should I change the settings on PC and wireless router, or just the wireless router?

If you change the router to use Open DNS servers then do an IPconfig /release then ipconfig /renew (in a dos window on your PC) your PC will then be using Open DNS. Your PC is told by the router what DNS to use unless you specify addresses on the PC.

TehTech · 05-01-2008, 22:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by dev

dns has nothing to do with download speeds, as said previously it only matters with resolving the domain name and thats usually only done once per site so won't help in speeding up browing as once you visit the site, you have the IP cached locally

Its still the case of false advertising, if it takes a simple page over 4 seconds to load, how on earth would I be able to download a music track within 2 seconds? it'd take that long to connect to the server where the track was located!

Zanny · 05-01-2008, 22:32

tis great, i even have my wireless router internally configured to use opendns by default.

looselipsuk · 05-01-2008, 22:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by Losttheplot

If you change the router to use Open DNS servers then do an IPconfig /release then ipconfig /renew (in a dos window on your PC) your PC will then be using Open DNS. Your PC is told by the router what DNS to use unless you specify addresses on the PC.

Thank you for that. Will try it out later.

05-01-2008, 22:55

Quote:

Originally Posted by looselipsuk

Thank you for that. Will try it out later.

No worries. Once set up on the router, all equipment requesting DHCP info will recieve those DNS server IP addresses.

downquark1 · 06-01-2008, 00:20

The only thing I don't like is: with a regular dns server when I'm lazy I can put a search term with a space into the firefox url bar and it will do a I'm feeling lucky search and almost instantly bring me to the page I wanted. With openDNS when I do that it takes me to the openDNS search page which is just slower than google and I have to click on the one I want.

Stuart · 06-01-2008, 00:50

Quote:

Originally Posted by dev

dns has nothing to do with download speeds, as said previously it only matters with resolving the domain name and thats usually only done once per site so won't help in speeding up browing as once you visit the site, you have the IP cached locally

I personally don't think faster DNS will make much difference. While it will make some difference (particularly if a site uses content from a lot of different servers), each lookup only takes a few milliseconds, so you would be hard pushed to see much improvement.

dev · 06-01-2008, 01:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stuart C

I personally don't think faster DNS will make much difference. While it will make some difference (particularly if a site uses content from a lot of different servers), each lookup only takes a few milliseconds, so you would be hard pushed to see much improvement.

thats what i was saying...

the dns lookup is a tiny tiny tiny amount of the total time for loading a page and any speedup is only seen the first time a site is visited that day (or possibly even few days/week) and imo isn't worth dealing with a service that messes with dns queries

Stuart · 06-01-2008, 01:31

I was actually agreeing..

dev · 06-01-2008, 01:36

my mistake, thought you were disagreeing

progers · 06-01-2008, 13:04

I have just tried it and not really found any perceptible difference although if anything I would say it was slower. So, carried out some ping and traceroute tests this morning:

Open DNS1 (208.67.222.222) ping average 20mS, 13 Hops
Open DNS2 (208.67.220.220) ping average 18mS, 12 Hops

ntl DNS1 (194.168.4.100) ping average 11mS, 5 Hops
ntl DNS2 (194.168.8.100) ping average 14mS, 8 Hops

Ping tests were carried out continuously for about 5 mins.

My conclusion is that the speed difference is minimal.

Impz2002 · 06-01-2008, 13:22

for some yes it is. It all depends on how much load your local DNS servers are under at peak times.

Like i said it dosnt make a difference for all but i suffer from terrible load times using Virgins DNS. Alot of pages just timed out as virgins servers would not resolve the address. You tried it at least

Impz

ikthius · 06-01-2008, 14:02

I for one noticed a good difference using it, got my router seeing it too for all connections

ik

Stuart · 06-01-2008, 14:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Impz2002

for some yes it is. It all depends on how much load your local DNS servers are under at peak times.

Like i said it dosnt make a difference for all but i suffer from terrible load times using Virgins DNS. Alot of pages just timed out as virgins servers would not resolve the address. You tried it at least

Impz

Fair enough. If your local DNS servers are unreliable then it does help.