One of the most reported issues with ISPs is with regards to slow loading web pages, and generally slow connections. People call their ISP every day to complain about bottlenecks occurring at peak times of the day. ISPs hear it all the time – ‘It is like I have a dialup modem not broadband!’

The problem is that most of the time due to infrastructure costs and changes, there is not a lot they can do about it. There is something that you as a person whom loves to use the internet can do to rectify the issue when you find even Google loading like you have a 28.8 modem plugged in somewhere.

It’s called OpenDNS – it’s free and easy to set up.

Some great points to bear in mind, you will benefit from:

1. Faster loading web pages

2. Preventing phishing attempts

3. Blocking sites that you wish your children to avoid

Essentially DNS works by resolving names to ip addresses so when you open Google, what happens on a DNS server is it translates the web name address to an ip address which numerically identifies that domain. For example, google.com has an ip address of 209.85.229.104 (no need to worry about what that means if it’s alien to you!)

ISPs have their own DNS servers to allow web pages we visit to become cached on those servers for faster loading of the web pages on repeated visits. The problem occurs when you have an ISP with oversubscribed services and too many people accessing the DNS servers at one time. This racks up the loading time of web pages as the DNS server becomes increasingly busy.

Reports on improvements noticed when using OpenDNS include steaming video as on YouTube and faster loading web pages. OpenDNS allows for a faster loading browser as the server is resolving addresses faster than your ISP DNS servers. Why? It’s installed locally. The journey from the ISP DNS server to your computer has a bunch of hops across the network to get through before it reached you.

DNS servers within the ISP network will inevitably have higher latency times. It can also depend on your location to the ISP. Ping times to the OpenDNS server are still being reported as much faster.

Users are finding the server generally reliable. A report from the techie information portal Labnol referencing a piece from the Financial Press newspaper stated, ” Unlike the DNS servers of your less reliable ISP, OpenDNS servers store the ip addresses of millions of websites in their cache so it would take less time to resolve your requests.”

How does it work? When you open a web page, the fetch request goes to your local server. The DNS address of the page requested will be checked against the list and if the page is not found, a DNS request is sent to OpenDNS. If you run a home network, add the OpenDNS server addresses to your router for immediate filtering to occur.

Those addresses can be found here.

So, if you are pulling hair out of your head as your broadband speed slows to some abnormal speed, try out the OpenDNS server and see if it helps your internet browsing life.