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Transcript
Hi everyone, Leo Notenboom here.
Changing your DNS provider on your computer can sometimes have some benefits, including both speed — some DNS providers are better than the ones that you get by default by connecting to your ISP’s connection — some provide additional levels of security. privacy by filtering some of the sites you can and cannot connect to.
DNS of course is that function that map’s domain names like askleo.com into the IP addresses that actually refer to the servers on which they live out on the Internet.
As it turns out changing the DNS setting in Windows 10 is, as is so many things, buried a little but it’s not that hard to find.
We’ll right-click on the networking icon. Now, you can see here mine says “Network 3 internet access” — you may have a Wi-Fi connection icon there as well, I happen to be on cable, my computer is connected with an Ethernet cable.
We’ll open network and Internet settings, Change adapter options, again on the connection that you are currently using for the internet, right click on that, click on properties, and this brings up the magic dialog that we really care about.
We start with Internet Protocol version 4 and click on properties. And here’s the setting. Right now we’re set to “Obtain the DNS server address automatically”. If you want to undo this change you would return to this dialog and change this back to “Obtain DNS server address automatically.”
We’ll set instead “Use the following DNS server addresses” it will just change it from nothing to 1.1.1.1.
Now, they often want an alternate DNS server if you look at CloudFlare’s documentation — they’re the that are providing the 1.1.1.1 DNS — they suggest an alternate service of 1.0.0.1. And that’s it. All you really need to do is click OK and the DNS server for TCP/IP version 4 will have been updated.
Now if you’re going to go through this effort, my recommendation is that you also do the equivalent change for TCP/IP v6 and it’s very similar:click on Properties change to “Use the following DNS server addresses”. Now unfortunately with TCP/IP version 6 they’re not as obvious, they’re not as easy to remember, so I’m actually going to go over here and copy/paste in my entries from the CloudFlare documentation. And their alternate which again looks very similar … same thing 1 1 1 1 and 1 0 0 1 are the way they end.
But again, now we’ve got it set for both TCP/IP version 4 and IP v6. And that’s really all there is to it.
If you want to revert to the previous settings so you’re getting your DNS services from your provider, just undo that. Make sure that both of them are set to “Obtain the IP address automatically from your
provider”.
1.1.1.1 is one example of an alternate DNS provider, provided by CloudFlare. Google has one at 8.8.8.8 their alternate 8.8.4.4. Another popular one is OpenDNS; they’re the ones that provide additional filtering. I’ll point you at their site: just Google OpenDNS for their settings, their DNS server IP addresses aren’t quite as memorable.
I’m Leo Notenboom this is askleo.com, Thanks for watching!
Is it a better idea for the alternate DNS IP address to be for a difficult provider than the provider used for the preferred DNS? I ask because what if CloudFlare is having a problem, wouldn’t both of their primary and alternate DNS IP address be impacted by the problem? Maybe the alternate provider should be your ISP or at least another primary like Google’s Public DNS or OpenDNS?
That’s kind of how I’ve viewed it, yes. But there are times when only one of a provider’s servers will have issues as well. Pragmatically most all of these mainstream services so rarely have errors that it probably doesn’t matter.
I use Google’s DNS. My reasoning is that no one has the Internet better mapped than Google and Google has some of the fastest servers on the Net. Is that a reasonable assumption?
CloudFlare claims they are faster.
A few questions please:
1- will the results from changing DNS be the same regardless of which provider or which geographical area or even which tower is used?
2- rather than guessing whether it’s helping or not, is there a test program (like speedtest.net) that will show the difference?
3- With a stable ethernet connection on Comcast, is any improvement likely to be noticeable and if so, what specifically will improve – page loading times, video refresh, etc?
1a. Results as in values: should be the same, unless your local country forces some domains to be blocked at the DNS level.
1b. Results as in speed: should be tailored to your location, meaning faster.
1c. I don’t see how towers are involved. DNS servers are unrelated to towers.
2. Sure. Here’s one: https://www.dnsperf.com/
3. It depends on your ISP. Generally page load times get slightly better.