DNS Archives - Smartchoice.pk https://smartchoice.pk/blog/tag/dns/ Personal finance, insurance & life style tips to help you make smart decisions Thu, 04 Aug 2016 11:37:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.5 https://smartchoice.pk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/fav_64.png DNS Archives - Smartchoice.pk https://smartchoice.pk/blog/tag/dns/ 32 32 Speed Up Your Internet – Get A New DNS https://smartchoice.pk/blog/2015/01/speed-up-your-internet-get-a-new-dns/ https://smartchoice.pk/blog/2015/01/speed-up-your-internet-get-a-new-dns/#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2015 13:51:57 +0000 https://smartchoice.pk/blog/?p=117 There are various things you can do to speed up your internet unless your Internet provider is not able to […]

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]]> There are various things you can do to speed up your internet unless your Internet provider is not able to offer internet speed as advertised. One of the ways is to get a new DNS.

Domain Name System allows you to visit websites via memorable addresses instead of remembering the IP addresses of different websites that you intend to visit. DNS is an important factor to offer you a fast browsing experience. No matter your default DNS address assigned by you Internet Service Provider works well, but you can improve the browsing speed by analyzing the best DNS servers for you via utilities like DNS Benchmark and Namebench. Before analyzing the best DNS servers for your internet, we need to find out the reasons that how other DNS servers may speed up the internet browsing. The reasons to change DNS servers include

  • DNS server may be experiencing heavy traffic
  • Have a limited cache
  • Have invalid cache entries
  • Greater response time

There are several utilities that can help you to find the right DNS server for your internet via conducting different tests. These tests also take the geographical location in consideration and provide you the best DNS servers and also notifies you about the performance improvement.

Recommended Read : How to change your DNS with ease

DNS Benchmark

DNS Benchmark is a free software by Gibson Research Corporation. It is just 163KB in size and is available for Windows. It can be used on Linux and Mac OS via Wine utility. Once you download and start the software, you get a welcome screen with content that explains what is DNS and why it is used. It also explains how DNS can be used to speed up the internet. You can select the Nameservers tab from the top and click Run Benchmark to start the test. Once the test is finished you will be able to see the results that can be sorted in the fastest first order. The conclusion tab displays the errors and recommendations based on the test results. It is recommended not to use any internet service while the test is in progress because doing so may produce results that vary greatly. Click here to get DNS Benchmark

dns-benchmark

Namebench

Namebench is also a free software that to test the best DNS servers. Namebench runs fair and thorough benchmark and is available for Windows, Linux and Max OS. Namebench offers a graphical user interface as well as command line version. Once you download and extract the the software, you get a simple screen to configure the required options and start the test. You can set the location, configure data query source and set number of queries. Once the test is completed it displays the best DNS settings and the improvement percentage that the recommended DNS server will offer while browsing internet. However Namebench test is relatively slow if compared with the DNS Benchmark. Click here to download Namebench

namebench

This was all about speeding up your internet by getting a better DNS server. We hope that by using above free software products you will be able to find a better DNS server that will enhance and speed up your browsing experience.

If you planning to change your internet connection, click here to compare internet prices and packages in Pakistan. To check your internet speed, click here to take this free test

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]]> https://smartchoice.pk/blog/2015/01/speed-up-your-internet-get-a-new-dns/feed/ 1 How to change your DNS with ease https://smartchoice.pk/blog/2014/12/how-to-change-your-dns-with-ease/ https://smartchoice.pk/blog/2014/12/how-to-change-your-dns-with-ease/#comments Thu, 18 Dec 2014 14:06:27 +0000 https://smartchoice.pk/blog/?p=90 Of course it would have been impossible for internet users to remember hundreds of IP addresses to visit different websites. […]

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]]> Of course it would have been impossible for internet users to remember hundreds of IP addresses to visit different websites. DNS stands for Domain Name System that is an essential part of internet’s  infrastructure. It allows you to connect to different websites using easily memorable domain names like Google.com. However, behind the scenes the domain name is mapped to an IP address and the corresponding site is displayed in your browser. Leaving out the technical details of how the Domain Name System works, we will discuss below how to find out the DNS server address of your computer and how to use different freely available DNS servers.

Find Out Your DNS Server Address

You may wish to find the DNS server address of your computer. Doing so is much easier. Just open the command prompt via

Start->All Programs->Accessories->Command Prompt

Once you open the command prompt, execute the following command and you will get the IP related info.

ipconfig/all
dns

 

A bonus tip related to DNS is clearing DN

S cache. You may need to clear the DNS cache because the site you are visiting has recently moved or your DNS server has invalid cache entries. Whatever the reason is, you can clear the DNS cache executing the command below on the command prompt.

ipconfig /flushdns

Switching DNS Servers

Alternative options allow you to change the DNS server from that of default provided by your Internet Service Provider. Key reasons to change the DNS server may be to speedup the browsing and security. Google DNS and OpenDNS are two very popular DNS servers. However, besides these there are many free as well as paid DNS servers available for use. Changing the DNS server is also easy enough and just takes minutes. To do so, just open

Control Panel->Network & Connections
Adapter Settings->Adapter Properties
IP Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)->Properties

 

google_dns

 

Once you are in the configuration properties of Internet Protocol Version 4, check the use following DNS server addresses and enter the preferred and alternate DNS server addresses. Like if you want to use the Google DNS servers instead of default DNS servers, your configuration will look like the screenshot below.

Alternative DNS Servers

A quick search on Google will find you loads of websites that offer free DNS servers. You can use their DNS servers for different reasons like faster browsing, security and parental controls. In addition to Google DNS, we have listed below several other websites that provide reputable DNS servers that you can use free of cost.

Google
Preferred : 8.8.8.8
Alternate : 8.8.4.4

OpenDNS

Preferred : 208.67.222.222
Alternate : 208.67.220.220

Norton ConncetSafe

Preferred : 199.85.126.10
Alternate : 199.85.127.10

DNS.Watch

Preferred : 84.200.69.80
Alternate : 84.200.70.40

Dyn

Preferred : 216.146.35.35
Alternate : 216.146.36.36

This was a little introduction about DNS, how it works and what are the alternatives to default DNS server addresses. In a nutshell you can use DNS to block unsafe sites, speedup internet browsing and much more.

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