Swapped DNS

[Rod]

This is probably old hat for some of you but yesterday I changed the DNS on my MBP from the one provided by my ISP to a public version of Open DNS. The result was it more than doubled the speed of my downloads/uploads. Now I have tried this before and it worked but lately here in Indonesia we have a fairly good internet plan adequate for my computer needs.

NB. Dependent on your ISP provided DNS Server, changing to a public DNS may make little or no difference, things are a little different in a developing nation like Indonesia.

The real reason for the trial was to do the same thing for my Xiaomi MiBox Android set top box, running as it does with a VPN for o/seas TV access. Encouraged by the above results I did some research and found a You Tube video on how to do the same thing for Android TV or any Android TV device.

The first thing advised was to download a WiFi Speed Tester from the Google Play Store called Analiti. This is a great free app for Android, better than all the others I had tried so it's worth getting that for it's unique features alone. The reason for downloading this app is because it's an easy way to find your IP address and Gateway IP. Armed with that data you are instructed on how to set up a Static IP as apposed to DHCP (the usual default setting) with a primary and secondary Public DNS.

There are a number of free public DNS to choose from, Open DNS, Google DNS, and Cloud Flare just to name a few. Many offer filtering options as well for security and content blocking as well as IPv6 versions, which have more unique addresses. There are some other technical differences that make IPv6 more secure and flexible, but its speed is usually the same as IPv4.

For my purposes I chose Google's Public IPv4 DNS which promises three core benefits: a faster browsing experience, improved security, and accurate results without redirects. Perfect for live streaming TV.

The results were the same as for my MBP, almost three times the previous speed. The only downside being the minor annoyance of a notification on my home screen which tells me I don't have an internet connection which is clearly untrue. I cannot find a way to permanently fix this although I can dismiss it in the short term but it always returns when I go back to the Home screen.

Someone who knows more about the topic might be able to shine some light on this but basically it makes no difference to the performance which is so much better than before.

So, if you think you might benefit from faster internet speeds by all means try out some public DNS but remember; Take note of your current DNS, write it down before doing anything else so you can return to your ISP's DNS of choice if you don't like the results. As I found, adding a new DNS on the Mac DNS Settings screen immediately erases the existing one.
After changing your default DNS it's a good idea to clear your browser and DNS Cache (easily done with Onyx on Maintainence settings). That will give you immediate results with your bookmarked web sites.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Just a note of clarification, a faster DNS will NOT make your Internet speed faster. Your speed is your speed. What a fast DNS (Domain Name Server) will do is resolve a name to an IP address quickly for the all the resources needed for a website to load.

So, if you visit a website (like mac-forums.com), there is content loaded from the server that houses this website and then there are links to other websites that host other content. Your browser needs to resolve each of those domains to their IP addresses and get all the content to render the full site.

Traditionally ISP DNS' are slow and monitor EVERYTHING you do to see if they can inject ads, monitor/block traffic and so on.

An open DNS wouldn't do those things and as such you get the "faster" speed.

 

[Rod]

That's a good clarification Ashwin. The effect for users will vary according to their individual ISP's provided DNS and their effective maximum speed will still be whatever their plan states. Here in Indonesia we have a 100Mbps plan but we seldom actually get that. We often only get 40Mbps or less on our computers and phones. With Open DNS I am getting 100Mbps with very little fluctuation.

On the Android TV box we regularly only got around 20Mbps or less in the evening on the same plan. Now we are getting around 45Mbps. Clearly media streaming is different especially here. All the devices are using Express VPN so of course that slows things a little too.

In contrast, in Australia we only have a 20/40 plan. That is, 40Mbps (most of the day) and a guaranteed 20Mbps minimum during peak periods. That's adequate for our needs and fits our budget but the speed remains constant unlike here, plus we don't need a VPN for media streaming.

Here is a fairly good article on free DNS servers and what they offer from Lifewire; The Best Free and Public DNS Servers (2024)

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Changing your DNS can make a very noticable difference in performance. There *was* a wonderful free utility that you could run that would check a large number of DNS's, and rate them for use on your computer for your location/ISP. It was:

namebench (free)

Google Code Archive - Long-term storage for Google Code Project Hosting.

code.google.com

Unfortunately, namebench is 32-bit, and won't work on any Mac running later than Mojave (macOS10.14).

There are alternatives to namebench, that will run on 64-bit only Macs, but they are only for the technically minded:

Namebench replacement?

there was a utility that analyzed dns performance called namebench. Sadly it is only 32 bit, so does not work on Catalina. Is anyone aware of something that replaces it? thanks in advance.

forums.macrumors.com

For what it's worth, for my DNS, I use:

Warp (free)

1.1.1.1 — The free app that makes your Internet faster.

Install the free app that makes your phone’s Internet more fast, private, and reliable.

one.one.one.one

Warp isn't just a very fast, free DNS. It also encrypts more of your data so that you get much more privacy on the Internet.

 

[Rod]

Yes, thanks Randy, I have tried Cloud Flare's Warp, it's very fast but not quite as universal as Google's Public DNS (unfortunately). "Google can achieve fast speeds with its public DNS servers because they're hosted in data centers all around the world, meaning that when you attempt to access a web page using the IP addresses provided, you're directed to a server that's nearest to you." Sadly this does not hold true for Cloud Flare here in the Southern hemisphere.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

Yes, thanks Randy, I have tried Cloud Flare's Warp, it's very fast but not quite as universal as Google's Public DNS (unfortunately). "Google can achieve fast speeds with its public DNS servers because they're hosted in data centers all around the world, meaning that when you attempt to access a web page using the IP addresses provided, you're directed to a server that's nearest to you." Sadly this does not hold true for Cloud Flare here in the Southern hemisphere.

And then that only helps if you have a website that is itself hosted on a CDN so that you can get that speed. The bulk of the websites out there are hosted on specific resources in specific regions.

My company's website, for example, is hosted entirely within US-EAST-1 on AWS (Northern Virginia) and so being in the east coast, my access to the site is faster than my colleagues in the west coast. My colleagues in Asia and elsewhere have even slower speeds.

We do have CloudFlare in our environment, but more for caching and intrusion protection, we aren't using it as a CDN.