Improve your internet speed with faster website loading times

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January 1, 2008 by mike

A quick new-year’s tip for improving your web browsing experience and making your web pages load quicker:

Use OpenDNS (www.opendns.com).

It will take you a few seconds to do, and will save you a few hundred milliseconds on average each time you load a web page.

OpenDNS is a free replacement for your ISP’s own DNS servers. A DNS server is a machine which your internet connection uses to look up web addresses and to convert them to the unique IP address where the website files can be found. Whenever you type in a web address, for example www.google.com, before the page loads your connection first needs to find the numerical address (in this case: 208.69.34.230) in order to locate the phyiscal page on the internet. A DNS server is required to match the web name with the IP address number. Your ISP will already be providing this service, although it is likely to be running at near-maximum or over capacity and this results in a slow web browsing experience, especially at peak time.

OpenDNS has a distributed network of DNS servers around the world and will automatically choose the fastest one for your connection. As an added benefit, OpenDNS automatically filters out know phishing/scamming and illegal or dangerous websites for you. You can also register your IP address with OpenDNS and they can provide you with free statistics on your household’s or businesses surfing habits and from this you can block specific sites and content from ever being accessed. This service is definately one for the control freak or senior management

When my clients ask me if there is anything they can do to tweak the performance of their internet connections to speed up web browsing, this is the first trick of the trade that I show them. They’re always pleased with the results, especially for the price (it’s completely free!).

What do you think? Did you know that changing your DNS server could improve performance or give you immediate control over your network’s internet use? I’d love to hear your views; drop a comment below.