As I was waiting for my domains to fully propogate, I discovered OpenDNS.
If you’re not using OpenDNS yet, click on this page and you’ll see
Does OpenDNS improve speed? In short, yes. It gets you to websites faster because hostnames are resolved more quickly.
(If you just want to know how to use OpenDNS, scroll down to the middle of the article. Otherwise, read on.)
DNS, if you don’t already know, is the Domain Name System. It’s easy for us to deal with hostnames like google.com or yahoo.com but computers prefer to deal with numbers.
Think of DNS servers as a phone book filled with telephone numbers to websites. (Well, not just websites, but expaining this will be a lot more complicated.) These telephone numbers are called IP addresses. And if you look through it, it’ll look something like this:
64.233.187.99
207.46.197.32
207.241.148.80
213.177.33.56
Can you imagine if you have to remember website addresses like that?
Luckily we don’t. Whenever we type in google.com, a request to a DNS server is made. The DNS server interprets the name and works it out to an IP address before going to that site.
Each computer has a different IP (telephone number). And when a website changes hosts, they move to a different machine and that machine will have a different IP.
During this change, the DNS has to propagate. This is when all the different DNS servers start to know that a particular website now has a different telephone number.
But some DNS servers are slower than others to update their records. So when a website has just moved, sometimes visitors to the website be going to the old telephone number and some, which are updated quickly will go to the new telephone number.
As you can see, this makes things a little difficult for dynamic websites. Yes, during this time, information loss, missing emails are not uncommon. So it’s important to have two working concurrent sites to trap visitors to the old and new site and not lose any data.
You can imagine how hard it is for large websites with many visitors.
You will have guessed by now that the minute you open the web browser and type in any address, you will be requiring the services of a DNS. Unless you know the IP address and type that in instead.
In most cases, we use the DNS of our Internet Service Provider (ISP). In my case, I’m using Starhub. Its DNS servers are 202.156.1.38 and 202.156.1.58.
But it was slow in realising that I had moved this website to another host (ie changed telephone numbers).
So I changed my DNS to head to OpenDNS, which is supposed to propogate domain names more quickly.
It did.
I rebooted my machine, and viola! I was being directed to my new host.
Not only that, I’m realising faster speeds when I visit other websites because of the DNS cache that OpenDNS has. From the time I hit enter after typing in the website to when it gets me to the website feels zippier.
OpenDNS’ servers are at 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
OpenDNS is faster and safer because they intercept phishing sites. And they tell you why here.
Convinced? Here’s how to change the DNS on your computer.
If you have a home network and router:
Head here for instructions on various routers.
I have a Linksys. Use your browser to go to your router. For Linksys, by default, the IP is 192.168.1.1
You’ll be prompted for a user id and password. The user id is usually “admin” and the password is whatever you set as the password. I certainly hope you haven’t left it at the default value of “admin” because that means anyone can get in and take over control of your router.
I’ve got the WRT45G. So in my Basic Setup menu, I just look for the static DNS fields and fill it in with OpenDNS’ servers. If it’s filled with some other numbers, take down those numbers just in case you need to reset everything.
That’s really all you need to do unless you use fixed IP addresses in your home network, then you need to read on.
If you don’t have a network:
In Windows, head to the Control Panel – Network Connections – Right Click on Local Area Connection – Properties.
You’ll see a window like this.
Select TCP/IP. Click on properties.
This is where you’ll change the DNS servers. (Write down the old entry if there’s one and keep it in a safe place, just in case things go wrong.)
Note here that if you have “Use the following IP address” specified in your network, you will have to specify OpenDNS’ address for each computer on your network, even though it’s already specified in the router. Windows is not as smart as the Mac OS (see below).
That’s it! Click OK and reboot.
On a Mac:
This is super easy.
In your Network Preferences just make sure the DNS servers field is blank if you are on a home network and have already modified your router.
If you don’t have a home network and router, just fill the DNS Servers field with 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. One IP on each line, and you don’t need the “and”.
All should be fine and you should be surfing faster. If not, you can always revert back to the old entry.
To check if you’re really on OpenDNS, click on this page.
