This article will help you to change your DNS server address to the most famous and secure Public DNS servers that offer better performance and security for your home network.
What is a Public DNS?
DNS servers are Domain Name Resolvers that have a significant role in the browsing experience. When you request www.mashtips.com, the DNS servers are resolving this website name to a server IP address where the MashTips website hosted. The browsing speed from your computer may delay if you have a DNS server that provides a poor name resolving service. This may delay loading the website on your browser. The security aspect is another critical point that needs to consider. Public DNS is the alternative Domain Name System (DNS) service offered to the Internet to act as recursive name servers for Internet users. There are several Public DNS providers are available for different countries from different DNS providers like Google DNS and OpenDNS. These services available for free or paid depends on the services offered by the provider. There are more details you can refer to Wiki about Domain Name System.
The Benefit of Public DNS.
Compare to local DNS providers, Public DNS providers are a huge network, located servers in several placed in the world and handling billions of requests per day. Public DNS hosted in each country can improve the speed of the web page loading by resolving the name quicker than international Domain Name Servers. Please refer for more details about the performance benefits of Google DNS on this link. These Open DNS servers are built for high performance and will be more reliable than your local internet provider’s servers. There are Public DNS services like OpenDNS, offer more security while you browse the internet and offers parental control. The parental controls allow you to filter out the adult content, illegal activity sites while browsing from the home network. The benefits list extends to additional benefits like Phishing protection, Access to blocked content, etc.
Best Public DNS Services.
There are a lot of quality DNS services provides by the network and security giants like Google, OpenDNS, Norton, etc. These services are providing fast and reliable network services with extended security.
Google DNS
Google DNS is the world’s largest DNS provider. Google DNS, announced in Dec 2009, is resolving billions of requests per day, hosted servers worldwide. Google Public DNS offers public use of IP addresses 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for IPv4 and 2001:4860:4860::8888 and 2001:4860:4860::8844, for IPv6 access. The addresses are mapped to the nearest operational server by anycast routing. Google DNS offers speed and security improvement while you browse the internet. Link: Google DNS | Public DNS IPs: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4
OpenDNS
Cisco owned OpenDNS service serving billions of requests per day worldwide. OpenDNS is fame not only for public DNS but also for offering free web filtering for home and office networks. OpenDNS offers premium service for home and business networks to protect their network with proper web filtering and security features. OpenDNS server IP addresses are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 for IPv4 access. Link: OpenDNS | Public DNS IPs: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220
Norton Connect Safe
Norton ConnectSafe is a free service that provides basic browsing protection and content filtering for all Web-enabled devices on your home network. Norton offers three different layers of protection that A – Security (malware, phishing sites, and scam sites), B – Security + Adult Content and C – Security + Adult Content + Other. The address of Norton DNS IP varies depends on this layer of protection, see more details including the IP address in the Norton DNS configuration page. Those who are interested in Public DNS servers can do additional research on this page, those summarize a collection of DNS list. Link: Norton Connect Safe | Public DNS IPs: DNS List
Check Public DNS Performance Before you Switch.
Those who are changing the DNS to Public DNS just for speed improvement, there is an open-source tool from Google. The Public DNS performance check tool called Namebench that can download from here. Namebench hunts down the fastest servers available for your computer to use and runs a benchmark using your PC web browser history, tcpdump output, or standardized datasets in order to provide an individualized recommendation. Namebench is completely free and does not modify your system in any way runs on Mac OS X, Windows, and UNIX, with a graphical user interface as well as a command-line interface.
How to Switch to Public DNS?
While switching your DNS, you have to decide the level of change DNS change that you need. You can change the DNS in individual home PCs or the entire home network. To change DNS on MAC or PC is pretty easy, a 2-3 step solution. Please read the instruction from OpenDNS to change DNS on MAC. For Windows users, please read the instruction here to change DNS on Windows. Those who want to reflect the DNS change on the entire home network, they have to change DNS on your home network. There is a guideline from OpenDNS to change DNS on D-Link Router, Netgear or other Generic routers. Open DNS is a free and reliable service, that anybody can access and use it without any registration or additional cost from your pocket. Other than the price concerns, these public DNS servers can provide the best protection compared to your local Internet Service providers DNS. I would say go for it if you are satisfied with the performance test of these open DNS servers.
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