Upon reading this title, you may be wondering what a DNS server is exactly. Otherwise known as Domain Name System (or Server), a DNS server is an Internet service responsible for translating domain names into IP addresses. This happens because the Internet is technically based on IP addresses and not the alphabetic domain names we’re used to – these are easy for us to read, but not for your browser. Therefore, the faster your PC reads domain names, the faster you’ll be able to browse the Internet.
So how do you speed up your browsing experience where your DNS is concerned? It’s actually less complicated than you might imagine. Your current DNS would be your Internet service provider’s (ISP) and may be slower than you’d like it to be. There are other DNS servers you can switch to, two of which are Google DNS and OpenDNS. Here’s how to do it on a PC:
- Go to your desktop and right-click the network status notification icon. Select Open the Network and Sharing Center from the context menu.
- When that opens, click Change adapter settings in the column on the left.
- Right-click the network adapter you would like to change the DNS settings for and select Properties.
- Select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) from the list and click Properties at the bottom.
- You will see that your PC is set to get its DNS settings automatically. You will need to input either one of the below services below in order to make the process manual:
Google DNS:
Preferred: 8.8.8.8
Alternate: 8.8.4.4
OpenDNS:
Preferred: 208.67.222.222
Alternate: 208.67.220.220
And that’s all. Happy browsing!
