Can these make googling/internet slow?

My computer was set to automatically configure the DNS, but recently I’ve been getting slower and slower web responsiveness, Was getting google search speeds of 59 seconds at times, it was becoming unbearable. (It wasn’t all the time, but it’s been happening regular enough recently that it’s been bugging my nut.)

So I decided to give the google dns settings a chance 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. Bingo, 0.6secs in the search results.

Anyhow, now if I switch back to automatic, I seem to get fast speeds. So i’m think hmmmm odd, though I’d cracked it.

Next step I downloaded a DNS benchmark and found the virgin media DNS servers
Primary DNS: 194.168.4.100, Secondary DNS: 194.168.8.100.

I put them up and the virgin media bench marks higher than the google server, or open dns.

So I try manually inputting the virgin DNS setting, and I get faster speeds sitting around 0.37 seconds.

So this can only lead me to the conclusion that when your computer is set to automatically configure DNS, sometimes, it’ll put you on a slower network?

I’m winging it here btw, so feel free to educate me on the above!

Anhow, i’m now set to manually configured to use the virgin primary DNS (194.168.4.100) as my Primary and the google primary DNS (8.8.8.8) as my secondary.

Is my thought process above sound? Or are my conclusions full of shit? 😆

It won’t make the internet slow but your browser will wait a certain amount of time before it times out due to lack of a return address from the DNS request or seem slow if the lookup is slow. Especially pages with lots of different destinations. Once it receives the address it goes full speed.

In my experience it can help to specify a particular DNS.. I’ve dabbled but my speeds have never been slow enough to investigate properly.

We’d need more info on your Isp, what package your on, distance from exchange etc.

If you have a poor (as in limited by isp over subscription or a physical restrictions) connection, then it may not help too much.

Connection is fine, usually, just been something that seemed to be getting progressively worse. seems to be fixed with the manual input but obviously I’ll judge that over the next few weeks.

Should ebe 50meg, so 43 isn’t too bad. Not sure where the exchange is about here tbh.

AdamW – Member
It won’t make the internet slow but your browser will wait a certain amount of time before it times out due to lack of a return address from the DNS request or seem slow if the lookup is slow. Especially pages with lots of different destinations. Once it receives the address it goes full speed.

This makes sense, you could tell it was just sitting about waiting, then when connected it’d be fast. 56 seconds for a google is unacceptable mind! 😆

I don’t know what Virgin are doing, could be changing settings or could be coincidence.

Going out on a limb but try ipconfig /flushdns from a command prompt.

TBH though, if it’s working on manual settings I’d leave it, no harm done. Point of note though, it’ll only use the secondary if the primary fails; if the primary is merely slow it’ll never touch the secondary.

Aye, as I say, I’ll see how I go over the next few weeks. It should be fairly obvious if the manual input is working or not, it’s been a fairly regular occurrence of late.

Yes, understood, re how the secondary dns works, just thought it a decent idea to have the google back up incase virgins go down.

In honesty I’d probably switch them. (-:

NB Like VW Virgin have a little routine that gives a somewhat exaggerated result when using speedtest sites. Your best indicator is to see how quickly files download when doing an update. I’m using a German DNS provider as neither Google nor Virgin need to know anymore about my life.

Google first, google second. They probably have a couple of orders of magnitude more facilities/redundancy/processing power than virgin……..

My ISP has no DNS facility, google is the default.