My last blog dealt with routers and networks and so I will not repeat any of that blog or previous blogs. I must warn you that my discussion will be a bit technical but that it might inspire you to talk with a computer tech person to resolve your slow Internet issues.
A critical component of a connection to the internet is DNS. When you use Google, or other browser or go to any link on the Internet, do you notice that your browser takes its time. You may have DNS issues.
What is DNS?
DNS refers to Domain Name Service or Domain Name Server. Every domain name on the Internet has an IP address, but that name needs to be translated to its IP address. If one DNS server doesn’t know how to translate a domain name, it asks another server and so on, until the correct IP address is returned. So this asking becomes a network unto itself.
Microsoft Corporation, for example, has an IP address of 131.107.0.89. Thus the DNS server will have to translate the Microsoft name to its IP address. What if your computer is not resolving a DNS name or is resolving it slowly, you might not have the Internet connection or a slow connection.
Your connection to the Internet is a complicated connection of many working parts. Your computer repair tech must check all of these parts to determine what might be causing the issue.
Home Networking/DNS Troubleshooting
One of the first issues is to determine whether your network is connected. He or she will go to control panel and network sharing. An easier way would be to check the system tray and look for the network icon. If this icon has a yellow triangle, it means that you have lost your connection. It is usually a simple fix to connect back as long as you have the network password.
If you open the tray icon, you will see all the networks within a quarter mile of your house. To find out exactly what your DNS IP address is, you can go control panel and to network sharing and under details of your network you can find the IP address of your DNS.
To digress for a moment, home networks are more clogged today than ever before. I looked at mine the other day and found ten devices with IP addresses: three laptops, two printers, two fire sticks, one kindle and two phones. I was surprised at its growth over the years.
You may see your Netflix streaming start to slow with a lot of devices on the network. Your download and upload quality will also degrade as you increase your devices on the network.
Think of your bandwidth as a water pipe and only so much can pass through at a given time. Thus your devices must share a finite capacity of resources.
One of the ways to analyze why DNS is slow is to look at the response time it takes to ping your DNS. Pinging my DNS, my response time was 4 milliseconds. If your response was in the hundreds of millisecs, then this might explain why you have slow Internet.
Usually your DNS settings are configured by your DHCP server. Your computer repair tech however can manually configure your DNS settings. I changed my DNS settings to 208.67.222.222 which is the DNS setting for “OpenDNS”, a layer of security I use. I explained “OpenDNS” in a previous blog.
Your tech person can use a DNS optimizer which will collect details on the current network such as their configuration and compare them to available alternatives. Response time will be measured and analyzed. When you access a website, your choice of a DNS server can affect how fast a website loads. Your computer repair tech can also change your DNS settings in your router log on page if it needs to be done.
You can Google a list of the ten best DNS servers to use. OpenDNS was listed second and this is the one I use and recommend.
If you have a slow Internet or suspect that you have problems of DNS, be sure to call Perry’s Computer Repair.
