The Domain Name System (DNS) is the “phone book” of the internet.  Computers don’t understand web addresses like http://www.netsolinc.com.  They understand IP addresses.  In the same way that you use a phone book to retrieve a phone number by a person’s name, DNS changes web addresses into IP addresses. For instance, http://www.netsolinc.com gets changed to http://74.252.14.254.

The speed of your internet experience can be greatly influenced by DNS.  If your computer is taking a long time to look up names, then sites will load slower. Most pages will reference many addresses, and each of those addresses will need to be checked with DNS.  If DNS is slow, then each of those checks contributes to a slower page load.  For years, we at Network Solutions, Inc. have been utilizing a free service called OpenDNS.  OpenDNS is a company which provides free, fast, and reliable DNS.  They have some premium offerings as well, which can let you customize your internet experience.   The addresses of their servers are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.  All you have to do to take advantage of their speed and reliability is use those numbers for your DNS servers.

Since the Domain Name System is basically your link to finding sites on the internet, it can also be used to filter bad sites.  OpenDNS also offers a free service call Family Shield.  To utilize this service, all you do is use 208.67.222.123 and 208.67.220.123 as your DNS servers.  Using those servers, sites with adult content, anonymizers, and phishing get automatically blocked.   Using this service, you can worry a lot less about what content your child is viewing on the internet.

One last recommendation we have is another DNS provider which also makes antivirus software.  Sunbelt/Vipre Antivirus DNS focuses on blocking virus and malware sites. It can make your internet surfing a LOT safer.  As of today, the service is still beta and it is called ClearCloud.  Currently, the IP addresses for their servers are:  74.118.212.1 and 74.118.212.2. You can find more information about it on their forum.

We hope these suggestions can bring better performance and/or a safer internet experience for you and your computer.