I finally found out what's plaguing internet speed on the Mac

OK, before we start here, there needs to be a moment of clarity, a moment of honesty and a putting away of 'Mac Egos'.

Sometimes, for some people, Macs are inexplainably crap when it comes to internet browsing speed. I don't mean actual bandwith when downloading, or even the rendering speed of pages; I mean the lag that's often experienced when jumping from one domain to another. If you haven't experienced this, great, you can stop reading because this post will mean nothing to you. But for those of us who have scratched our heads when Vista, XP, Ubunti, DOS 1.0 all leave OS X in the dust for browsing, I think I found the answer.

In the network settings on OS X is a tab which says "DNS". When you renew a DHCP lease, this is populated with IP addresses which are sort of 'hints' for when you select web pages (they convert web names into IP addresses to be precise). Now, if you're using a cable modem and a router, it seems these hints can mess up, although conveniently only in OS X and not in Vista, Linux or even lowly XP. Now don't ask me too much about this, because I don't really get networking, but I followed a hint from the Apple site on their forum, which suggests putting two Open DNS entries in here, and OMG does this make a huge difference!

I don't know WHY this has become a necessity suddenly (it certainly wasn't a year ago, or even 6 months ago), but things have been so bad, I have actually started using a five year old PC desktop running Vista to browse, because it was quicker!

So... the magic formula? Using Open DNS settings... so it would appear that my Mac(s) (not my Windows machines) don't like the TWC DNS settings given by the DCHP lease. I still don't know why this is, a bit of a mystery I would say, but this solution works and I finally feel like I have broadband again.

Glad to hear you're back in business, Zoolook.

DNS server settings are populated by DHCP, which is taken care of by your modem and specified by your ISP. If you're using a router of some sort, your router acts as a DNS relay (i.e. your DNS server settings point back to the router's IP) and it is assigned the same DNS addresses that would have otherwise been assigned to your computer. You can of course bypass the router or the modem and point it to specific DNS servers by manually entering their addresses.

Often the DNS servers that your ISP recommends (and populates via DHCP) are not the fastest servers, and/or are under more load since the ISP is specifying those addresses to most or all of their customer base.

What I find perplexing is why this would make a difference between OSes. Are they not the same DNS server IPs applied in other OSes?

One last thing, and this is a note of caution - hackers have been known to deploy malicious DNS servers and use them as a honeypot to redirect the unknowing to inappropriate sites. However, as long as the servers you're using are in the Verizon domain, I'd say you're probably safe. Just be careful when experimenting with other open DNS servers.

I made this change several months ago.

I didn't really have the issue that I had read about from quite a few users.
But, after reading a lot of info and checking them out, I gave OpenDNS a shot and will say, their DNS name resolution far surpasses the speed of my ISP's (AT&T).

OpenDNS is doing a lot of work related to finding, verifying and blocking phishing scam sites. They seem to be keeping their servers patched with the latest security updates and appear to be quite conscientious as regards their business.

Obtained Primary and Secondary DNS addresses from my ISP and set up in System Preferences and this made a huge difference, particularly in sending Mail which was quite slow.

No one can explain why ISPs do not supply this information unless requested.

I switched to OpenDNS some time ago for the same reasons as given by Zoolook. My ISP (I subscribe to Verizon FIOS) could never clearly explain why my Mac would run so slow on their network while both my PCs flew.

Not only is OpenDNS safer (no phishing) it's faster, and that says it all. ;D

Regards.

cwa107 said:

What I find perplexing is why this would make a difference between OSes. Are they not the same DNS server IPs applied in other OSes?

Click to expand...

That's a mystery to me, I don't know why it makes such a difference, I should look at the allocated DNS servers in Vista; but I'm only just getting used to the OS and so haven't investigated.

One last thing, and this is a note of caution - hackers have been known to deploy malicious DNS servers and use them as a honeypot to redirect the unknowing to inappropriate sites. However, as long as the servers you're using are in the Verizon domain, I'd say you're probably safe. Just be careful when experimenting with other open DNS servers.

Click to expand...

Thanks.

I have been using Open DNS here on my main Mac (iMac G5 iSight) for over a year now. Made a noticeable different especially with some sites.

knowing which are the provider DNSs address and at some of the websites could be possible to make further investigations