Secrets ISPs Don’t Want You to Know About DNS Servers

You should know that there are some things you can control—and that you likely don’t know about—that will affect your personal Internet experience for the better. One change to consider is whether to switch the default DNS service your Internet Service Provider (ISP) uses. Here’s what that means: For now, you don’t really need to know too much about DNS services—how they work and such. You only need to know that you can use a different company’s DNS name resolution service…a third-party provider. And you need to know a few good reasons why you might want to switch DNS servers on your own. Some of the benefits a third-party DNS service can offer sound and perform much like those of a Virtual Private Network (VPN). However, there are some differences: Whereas a VPN service masks your IP address so no one can figure out where you are, a different DNS service fools a website because it “thinks” you’re eligible to access their content—in other words, under normal circumstances, they’d likely block your request if they saw that it had come from a DNS server in a restricted region. With those distinctions out of the way, here is a handful of reasons to use a different DNS service: Third-party DNS servers are sometimes faster than an ISP’s default DNS servers. That isn’t certain though. It will depend on how close the third-party DNS servers are to your home or office…and how slow your ISP’s DNS servers are. But it might be worth checking out. If your Internet Service seems unreliable, switching your DNS service might be an easy way to see if that’s the problem. If your ISP is bad at keeping their DNS servers up and running with no hitches, you may experience slow uploads and service while the DNS request gets bogged down. Switching to a more reliable service might solve that: Many DNS alternatives aim to provide the speedy service you want. If you have young children and want to set up Web filtering, there is a variety of different ways you can do it. One of the easiest ways to configure Web filtering is to change your DNS server to a service such as OpenDNS. By changing the DNS server on your router, you’ll be able to configure parental control settings on the OpenDNS website, allowing you to block certain categories of websites as well as view the ones that have been accessed from your home network. Better still, if you have a wireless network, you can block content to all devices, including tablets and smartphones, that use the network. Some DNS services offer extra filtering to block known phishing sites—websites that lure you in and hook you, compromising your computer or data. If that interests you, be sure to choose a DNS service that promotes that. Not all do. Similar to a Virtual Private Network, a few special third-party DNS servers will allow you to watch what’s called “geo-blocked” content. For example, people in other countries can’t access websites such as Netflix, Hulu, and BBC iPlayer. But some fancier DNS servers perform a little trick and will do some network “tunneling,” so to speak, to make it look as if you’re not in one of the “blocked” regions. And because some ISPs or networks in other countries block websites at the DNS level, a third-party DNS service that doesn’t block that website will help you get around it. Want to see a list of public DNS providers and the IP addresses to use? Read More