Say you type in the Wikipedia.org in your browser window. The DNS then converts the URL you typed into machine readable IP address and returns it to you. Only after the actual IP of the website is determined does the webpage begin loading for you.

OpenDNS has long since been considered the pioneer in the making the web faster by giving users a free, fast public DNS server with servers spread around the globe to reduce latency.

I’ve been using OpenDNS for the past two years for my needs, and needless to say the experience has been quite good. Not to forget the increase in speed while browsing the web. But today with the release of Google’s own DNS solution I was curious to see if it could beat the already fast service that OpenDNS provides.

So I ran my own tests sitting here in India, using this script by Manu over at TechSutra.

#!/bin/sh 
for i in "lifehacker.com" "facebook.com" "dailyapps.net"  "reddit.com" "google.com" "bbc.co.uk" "microsoft.com" "yahoo.com" "ebay.com"
do
  for j in "4.2.2.2" "8.8.4.4" "208.67.222.222"
  do
    echo $j $i `dig @$j $i | grep Query | awk -F ":" '{print $2}'`
  done
done

And here are my results :

As you can see Google DNS consistently was atleast two times faster than OpenDNS and even more faster than Level 3. Those of you in the U.S I believe shouldn’t see much performance difference between Google and Level 3.

For me personally, Google was always in the range 90-110ms while OpenDNS was in the 200-210ms range. A Significant performance boost I must say.

Is Performance a tradeoff for Privacy?

Hmm it depends on how you look at it. Surely Google has a lot of information about you, and a DNS server will only allow them to gather more data about you. They could in theory gather information about all the websites you visit. Sounds like Big Brother ain’t it, except that Google makes it explicitly clear that “Collected data includes IP address (up to 48 hours, to detect malicious behavior against the service), ISP information and geographic information (2 weeks each). The data is not correlated with your Google account in any way”

For more on what they log while using their DNS service, read the Google Public DNS Privacy Policy.

So as things stand at the moment you don’t have to worry about Privacy Issues. But OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch seems to have other concerns :

“Google claims that this service is better because it has no ads or redirection. But you have to remember they are also the largest advertising and redirection company on the Internet.
……
To think that Google’s DNS service is for the benefit of the Internet would be naive. They know there is value in controlling more of your Internet experience and I would expect them to explore that fully. And of course, we always have protected user privacy and have never sold our DNS data.”

At the end of the day, its pure competition. Google has been entering a lot of verticals lately, in their quest to make the web a better place for everyone. They’ve a long way to go, before they can achieve their goals.

What does this mean for OpenDNS? Well guys, you’ve had the free run for the past three years, now you got to make OpenDNS even more faster. Competition is always a wake up call.

So are you willing to give Google DNS a shot? Google has a handy guide for you to get started.

Google Public DNS (via Google Code Blog) | Photo Credit : jpctalbot

photo credit: jpctalbot

I’m not a Windows Vista fan, but even then everyone at my home uses Windows Vista, while I dual boot with OSX on my Hackintosh.. I’ve used XP before and for some reason I always felt that Internet speeds on Vista were comparably slower than on OSX, and more so even Windows XP.

Considering it was quite slower than what I used to get on XP, I realized that Vista was doing something extra that made my internet connection slow down. After a bit of investigation and a bit of googling I found the solution.

Before I give the solution, let me explain the problem in a bit more detail… It all comes down to Vista’s “Auto Tuning” feature. Turns out that this feature isn’t compatible with many routers and networking devices(including mine). Means the feature that was supposed to be a boon turned itself into some sort of a bane.

Anyways here’s what you need to do turn off the Auto Tuning feature on Vista..

At the Start menu type command, but don’t launch the command prompt immediately. Instead, right-click it and choose Run As Administrator. Once the prompt is open enter the following command.

netsh interface tcp show global

If the line Receive Window Auto-Tuning Level does not say “disabled,” enter this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=restricted

If this doesn’t help, substitute this command and see if it works

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=disabled

At this moment, you should notice considerable improvements in your browsing speeds, or rather you should be cruising now. If it works, you should notice the difference in browsing speeds immediately. If it doesn’t work for you, and you feel the need to put things back the way they were, you can type this command:

netsh interface tcp set global autotuning=normal

Here are screenshots showing the whole process, incase you feel the need for it..

Good luck, hope this works for you.. Please let us know if this worked for you or not..

If you are a Windows user, and your favorite browser happens to have a name Firefox 3, here is neat hack which you can use to tweak your Firefox install for maximum speeds and improved efficiency.. Don’t fret because this hack is really simple and doesn’t involve anything more than a couple of minutes of your time. Well I’m going to discuss about a freeware called FireTune, from Totalidea Software, which can give your Firefox browser some shots of adrenaline.

As you might already know most Firefox hacks involve messy fiddling up with options in about:config and there are a gazillion things than can go wrong and mess up with your Firefox install. Instead of dealing with all that mess, Firetune simply asks you a few questions about your computer and connection speed, then automatically configures Firefox for optimal performance—in seconds (No, Seriously!!).

FireTune does not muck up with Firefox executable file, or any other binary file, so you don’t have to worry that it’s going to turn the browser to a toast.

To get started download Firetune from here. Shut down all instances of Firefox and then fire up Firetune. It would be a good idea to back up your original configuration before you make any changes…

Now that you have backed up the configuration, select whether you have a fast Internet connection and a fast computer, or not. If you have at least a 1.5-GHz processor, 512MB or more of memory, and a reasonably fast broadband connection, select Fast Computer/Fast Connection.

Now click on the tab that says, “Other Optimizations”. Check the checkbox that says “Enable some performance tweaks common to all configurations’”.

Now click on the tab that says, “Other Useful Settings”. Check the checkbox that says “Optimize Firefox Memory Usage” 

That is it, now click the Tune It! Button and fire up Firefox once the tuning is done.

Browse through pages that usually used to be slow earlier. I’m sure you will see substantial improvements in the speeds. I’m sure you will find the overall experience of using Firefox much better, not that it was bad earlier!..

Now you must be wondering why many browsers are inherently built slow.. My guess is that coders build it for the people using the slowest internet connection, so that Firefox doesn’t render pages partially for the users.

But because you are a Dailyapps reader, I’m sure you want the fastest speed you can possibily get from your Firefox. That makes it exactly right for you to try out Firetune and give your Firefox a Nitro boost!

P.S. I’ve been a long time fan of Fasterfox, but I abandoned it in favor of Firetune because it doesn’t work with Firefox 3 at the moment.

Download Firetune