This probably happened to you at some point: you enter a web address or click a link, and your browser takes its sweet time to respond. Sometimes you need to click “go” again or refresh the page for it to get out of its limbo — and sometimes it just wouldn’t go to the page that worked fine a minute ago. You, being the power user that you are, curse [insert your ISP name here] under your breath and go to www.speedtest.net to see what speed you’re getting — only to find that the connection works as advertised. You even restart your router — and that doesn’t help either. Before you get on the phone with your ISP and hold endlessly while they’re “testing” the line, try our little DNS trick.

DNS or the Domain Name System is essentially your computer’s phone book for the Internet. It helps translate an Internet domain name like www.itmaxgroup.com into an IP address that your browser needs to connect to that website. Each time you visit a new website, a DNS query is issued in the background to one of the many servers that handle such translations. Your ISP configured one for you, but they likely send thousands of other customers to the same server – causing it to get overworked and slow to return the IP addresses your browser needs. Hence the low responsiveness you get during browsing. This doesn’t affect the speed of your downloads or bandwidth tests — just how long it takes you to go to new web destinations. Most of the time, all you need to do is configure your computer or router to use a different DNS server — and you’ll see the difference immediately. Here’s what you need to do:

1) Find a new DNS address. You can do this by going to www.dnsserverlist.org, which will get you the two or three best DNS servers for your location. Look for them lower in the page, like in the screen shot below:

2) Change your DNS server. This can be done in one of two ways:

• You can change it just for your computer in your network connection settings — it will looks something like the screen shot below. Here are the instructions on how to get to this screen in Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, MacOS Leopard or Tiger, Linux Ubuntu or Suse. The problem with doing it just on your PC is that it doesn’t help anyone else in the office.

• Change your DNS in the router, which is more permanent and affects all PCs connected to that router. You can access most consumer-grade routers by typing in 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 into the browser address field. You’ll know you did this correctly if you’re asked for your user name and password. Once you’re in, look for tabs called Network or Configuration and look for the section that lets you enter your DNS. Here are instructions for Apple, Belkin, D-Link, Linksys and Netgear.. if you have a business router or aren’t sure what your router is, you’re better off calling us. Once that’s done, click save and reboot your router.

Did this work? If you need help, don’t hesitate to call us at (847)371-3464 or emailing support@itmaxgroup.com! While you’re at it, ask us about a free IT infrastructure assessment offer we got going on.