You Need This (Probably)

I’ve been using Windows7 for about a week now, pretty satisfied with it, but one thing I’d noticed was that I was getting a lot of “server not found” errors in Firefox. I didn’t know if this was a Windows7 compatibility error in Firefox or some sort of networking bug in Windows7 itself, but needless to say it was pissing me off greatly.

Then it struck me: The DNS server.

DNS servers are essential to web browsing, they translate the text you input into the address bar of your browser into the numerical IP address of the website. If your DNS server is shit then you may be getting connected to websites far slower than necessary and if you get the sort of errors I was talking about before than it’s probably a symptom of shit DNS servers rather than a shit ISP (although your DNS servers are probably provided and maintained by your ISP so I suppose it’s still a shit ISP in the end).

I had my XP install set to use the OpenDNS servers rather than the ones provided by O2, which are evidently quite shit.

If you visit the OpenDNS website they try and get you to join up before they’ll tell you what to do – unless you want their filtering or whitelist/blacklist services you don’t need to join up, all you need is the two strings of numbers in the bottom right hand corner of the website.

There are two ways you can go about switching to new DNS servers, if you’re behind a router then you can set it to use the new DNS servers thus all computers on the network will use them too – you’ll have to refer to your own router manual to find out how to do that as they’re all different, but generally you’ll have to log in to your router (the address of which you should be able to find somewhere on the back of the device itself) – to do this you type the routers address into your browsers address bar. Router log in details vary, but your username will likely be “admin” or “administrator” and the password “password”. Once in you find the DNS settings and how to change them – that’s the bit you’ll have to look up.

If you don’t have a router (which is unlikely in today's broadband orientated world) or you can’t log in to your router, or simply don’t feel good about tinkering with the routers settings then you can alter the network settings on your computer to use alternative DNS servers. The procedure for doing this varies by Operating system this guide works for Windows7, if you’re using a different one and don’t know how, justfuckingoogleit.

Once you’re in a position to alter your DNS setting whether it be on your router or your computer these are the numbers you want:

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

Top set are your primary, bottom set your secondary.

If you’ve been having problems then this should clear them up, if you haven’t you might notice things happen a bit faster than they did before, either way you’re in a better situation.

Enjoy.

freedoms_stain, browsing better, out.