DNS settings - You can probably have have faster internet for free

[Guest Farnsbarns]

I went through a string of ISPs this summer and ended up with 80mb fibre from EE. It's a good router and the service has been fine so far but I was aware that something wasn't right. Often it would stall for quite a while when loading a page and then suddenly, bang, the page would load and render fast. Instinct told me this was a DNS issue. Whenever you request a page by name, website.com for example, your router uses a DNS server to resolve the name to an IP address, 88.77.63.45 for example. The DNS servers your router uses are preset by your ISP and are usually their own. Today I finally got round to logging into the router settings pages and changing the DNS servers to Google's. That's 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (there's 2, primary and secandary, set both).

 

I knew this would be the answer and I can't believe I took so long to get round to it. It's night and day. Now EE clearly have an issue with their DNS servers and the change shouldn't have been that profound but there's a good chance your ISP's DNS servers are a bottle neck. Try changing them.

 

I'm sure some of the other techies on here will have even better suggestions than Google but that's where I've started.

 

Just thought this might be useful to some of you.

[grovesnor]

Nice share dude. This has always been a badness about UK ISPs - over subscribed DNS servers. I've been using Google for a few years now after early unpleasant experiences with NT-Hell back in the early 00's. It is totally worth switching.

[windhoek]

Cheers FB, it seems like a good move! :)

[rct]

You don't have Comcast. Nothing is free here.

 

rct

[badbluesplayer]

Thanks for the tip. It didn't seem to make much difference for me but it's good to know how that works.