Here is an easy way to increase the speed of loading web pages by optimizing the DNS you are using when surfing the web. Everything you do on the internet will be affected by the speed of the Domain Name System you are using. So let’s try to make it faster.
DNS
Every time you visit a web page, the browser has to look up all the URLs to images, ads and other resources found on that page. Everything on the internet has a unique IP-address, but to make it easier for us imperfect humans, we use human-readable addresses. Like to this blog which is www.jackenhack.com. For the computer to get hold of the IP-address, it uses a system called DNS an abbreviation for Domain Name System. So it is used for looking up the IP-number for a given web address. The number of DNS lookups that is needed for a page to load stacks up quickly and every search takes time.
So a right way of optimizing your speed when browsing the web is to make sure that the servers you are using are as fast as possible. But how do you find out which DNS server to use? Thankfully Google has already written a program for just that purpose. It’s called NameBench and is a free download.
NameBench
The interface is pretty straightforward. The application contains a massive database with common DNS servers that it uses to test speeds. You have an entry line where you can enter DNS server IP-numbers yourself. Maybe you got some DNS servers from your internet service provider or other sources you like to test. To include them, Just put them on the line separated by commas in NameBench test.
DNS Speed Results
Quit all other applications that use the internet on your machine and make sure it doesn’t go to sleep during the test. Then press the Start button. It should take about ten minutes for the test to run. When it’s finished, it opens a web page with recommended DNS servers. As you can see, I have already optimized my servers, so I’m only getting a 5 percent gain if I change my settings, but you can typically get something like 20–60% or even higher speeds. When you have a fast DNS, the response of loading web pages is improved considerably. It’s an easy thing to check, so it’s worth a try.
As you can see in the picture, in the upper right corner, you get recommendations on how to set up the primary, secondary and tertiary servers. If you are using DHCP, you need to change the settings to the recommended ones on that device that hands out the DNS information to your computer. Usually, that’s on your firewall or Wi-Fi router. If you have fixed IP-addresses or don’t have access to the DHCP server settings, you can override the DNS settings in System Preferences/Network. Select the interface you want to change and press advanced. There is a tab for DNS, so just add them there, and you’re good to go.
Happy Hacking!
Craig Hughes says
…just don’t take DNSbench’s word about apparent DNS hijacking, for example:
8.8.4.4 Google Public DNS-2 google-public-dns-b.google.com 86.66 -36.7% 19.6 789.9 0 5
http://www.google.com is hijacked: 74.125.239.147, 74.125.239.146, 74.125.239.148, 74.125.239.144, 74.125.239.145
….apparently it detects that Google’s own DNS servers lie about http://www.google.com
Jack Zimmermann says
Good point!