OpenDNS and others

Well, Comodo offers an option to use their's DNS when you install it. Then there's this OpenDNS thing. As I understand it can make your internet faster, safer? I have a crappy russian provider and whatever DNS is, a new one should be better.
Plus I always like to try new things for my computer. Even if I don't need them. Just because they sound cool.

 

DNS is simply name resolution. Not much speed-related or safety-related about it.

 

Agreed. Changing your DNS will not improve your crappy provider connection at all.

 

What I mean is I have alright speed. But there's a time for connection to the website (few msecs). Won't a better DNS server provide better connection speed?

 

Subzero and Keg are taking your question literally. A better DNS CAN make your internet SEEM faster. Bandwidth-wise, it means nothing, but retrieving webpages...well, it depends.

As noted DNS means Domain Name System, and it is a process by which your computer retrieves websites. Computers do not understand forum.notebooksreview.com. When you type that in your browser, they shrug their shoulders and say,"?"

What happens next is the computer says, "Well, I don;t know where that is, so I am going to go over to this special computer called a DNS server and ask him where it is."

Your computer knows what DNS server to talk to because it already had an ip address for it -- through the DHCP process (another story) or because it was manually imputted.

So the DNS Server says, "Oh,yeah, forum.notebooksreview.com, that's at 208.87.149.250" and your computer then goes to the site and asks for the webpage.

Now, if you have a truly crappy DNS server it can help in several ways. First, if your ISP provider has one DNS server for all of its customers and all the customers are asking for DNS information at the same, your request goes in a line until it can be answered. So, a better DNS server will respond more quickly. Another way it helps is if the DNS server you contact HAS the information...if it does not, that DNS server has to go and ask another DNS server ... which takes time. Once a DNS server has information it caches it in memory (so does your own computer, so it does not need to make repeated requests for pages you visit a lot). And, then there are DNS servers that don't update reguarly--AOL, for example--so when a website changes from one server to another, it can take 24-48 hours before the DNS server knows.

So, the real answer is to change the DNS and if things improvebe happy. But it may not improve. Odds are, you are just stuck with a backwoods ISP with crappy connections to the Internet.

But a DNS change is hardly permanent--takes a second to change and a second to change back