I Switched to Google's Public DNS on My Router and PC: The Speed Difference Surprised Me
2 min read
Summary
The author was experiencing slow internet speeds when browsing and decided to investigate the cause
It appears that in some cases, internet service providers (ISPs) use slow and poorly maintained Domain Name System (DNS) servers that create a bottleneck, even if web pages load slowly because they have to wait too long to find out where to send requests for the data.
The author decided to try changing the DNS used by his router and PC to see if it made any difference to connection speeds.
He tested different DNS servers and concluded that Google’s DNS servers delivered the fastest response times, followed by Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 DNS servers.
He points out that setting DNS on the router covers all devices connected to the network and suggests that it is also worth setting up DNS on individual PCs.
He then compares before and after speeds when using the new DNS servers, with notable speed improvements on both his laptop and older devices such as an Amazon Fire HD 10 tablet.
The improvements came mainly when loading image-heavy websites, while there was little difference in video streaming, probably because the CDNs used by YouTube and Netflix minimise the impact of DNS speed.
