Performance problems on your Mobile Internet connection? Try this!

[Guest agent.m]

Off the charts Paul !!!!

Thanks make browing so much easier. :D

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

best-tweak-ever? :D

P

[Guest jimbouk]

...if you're on T!

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Smartphone instructions and screenshots now added, tested and working on SP5.

P

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

...if you're on T!

Has improved my C600 on Orange browsing speed considerably too in fact...

P

[Guest ndryer]

best-tweak-ever? :D

P

It's up there with turning off those pesky LED disco lights...

Edited August 22, 2006 by ndryer

[Guest jimbouk]

Has improved my C600 on Orange browsing speed considerably too in fact...

P

Which servers have you added? The ones here or other UK public ones?

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

The ones here.

P

[Guest tsutton]

Big difference in speed for e-mail collections... nice one!

Will try out web access later on.

[Guest paholman]

I know it didn't apply, but I thought "what the heck" and tried it on my QTEK 8500 smartphone. I must say it seemed to improve the speed on Orange. Unfortunately GPRS is hit and miss on my QTEK and doesn't always connect, but it does seem quicker with these DNS IP's instead of the 0.0.0.0 I had set.

[Guest SteadyHand]

Any idea if this can be used in the US.

[Guest jimbouk]

So I tested it again and definitely slightly longer on "locating" on Orange 3G.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

If u are in the US, you could probably improve performance further by visiting the OpenNIC Server Page and changing the values to geographically closer servers.

Ping them to make sure they're up first tho :D

P

See above :D

You'll only see a performance increase if these DNS servers outperform your operators. The real benefit people are seeing is that these are reliable, and T-Mobile UKs are AWFUL :D

P

[Guest vluther]

Hi Paul,

Nice topic, I guess i'll add my $0.02.

1. If you visit the same sites quite often, you can hard code their dns translation by editing the hosts file. This will speed things up even more, as you're not having to make the trip to your dns server. Windows phones are somewhat crappy in the way they handle their DNS cache (comparing my MDA II vs Treo 650).

2. If you visit sites that have ads etc, you can speed things up by making the ip address of those adservers always be 127.0.0.1. You'll get a lot of "connection refused" messages but you don't mind not seeing ads do you ? :D

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/

Is a great site to keep track of these servers.

I'm not sure where the hosts file will be on your phone, but on windows it's in c:\windows\system32\...

I use the same hosts file on my laptop (os x) and it's sped things up incredibly for myself.

The best way to find an open dns server that's fast and close to you is to talk to your local admin/linux guy who may be running a cacheing nameserver for himself, traceroute, ping the ip address of the nameservers, and whichever has the fewest number of hops, low ping times, and quick responses to things like nslookup will be your best bet.

OpenNIC is a great site for the dns servers as well.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

So in summary (vluther is DNS guru btw), what i'm doing makes sense? :D

I chose the 2 servers I did as they give me lowest ping time from the UK :D

P

[Guest vluther]

So in summary (vluther is DNS guru btw), what i'm doing makes sense? :D

I chose the 2 servers I did as they give me lowest ping time from the UK :D

P

I'm no guru, but you're on the right track, these tweaks are similar to the "web accelerators" that dial up services offer. Having a hosts file or a less visited dns server than say T-mobiles will give you the impression of things being faster as there is less overhead. For the people who are now experiencing an increase in transfer speeds, I have no idea what changed.. the time to download a file doesn't change as by that point the dns resolution has already taken place, and does not happen again.

I didn't check all the screens Paul posted so maybe he made you change some other settings as well, but dns alone doesn't make the interweb go faster :D.

[Guest mcwarre]

Two questions:

1. Has anyone tried this on UK Vodafone?

2. Does this make any diference to wi-fi?

[Guest vluther]

Two questions:

1. Has anyone tried this on UK Vodafone?

2. Does this make any diference to wi-fi?

I can't answer for #1 as I'm in USA, but for #2, these tweaks will work with any internet connection, whether it be on your phone (gprs/edge/evdo) is irrelevant, DNS is used from a TCP/IP, UDP stance.

It will also speed up surfing on your desktop/laptop(the impression atleast).

It's OS independant, Linux, Windows, OS X all benefit, as the dns layer the same across all systems that have tcp/ip implemented (pretty much everything).

[Guest Monolithix (MVP)]

1 - Dunno about Voda

2 - Nope, not at all. For reference, check out the OSI Network level standards. Wifi/HSDPA/GPRS/Ethernet is the physical layer, and absolutely nothing to do with DNS servers, which form part of the network (?) layer.

[Guest Monolithix (MVP)]

Also - shouldnt this be in WM news? ;p

[Guest vluther]

1 - Dunno about Voda

2 - Nope, not at all. For reference, check out the OSI Network level standards. Wifi/HSDPA/GPRS/Ethernet is the physical layer, and absolutely nothing to do with DNS servers, which form part of the network (?) layer.

There you go, someone knows his OSI stuff, I was drawing a blank on how to best describe it.

It may look like our posts are conflicting, but they are not. You can implement this tweak over wifi/edge/gprs

but it won't make wifi/edge/gprs any faster, just the dns resolution speeds up.

If you're downloading files at 150K/sec, this will not make the files be downloaded faster.

[Guest jfran]

I'm no guru, but you're on the right track, these tweaks are similar to the "web accelerators" that dial up services offer. Having a hosts file or a less visited dns server than say T-mobiles will give you the impression of things being faster as there is less overhead. For the people who are now experiencing an increase in transfer speeds, I have no idea what changed.. the time to download a file doesn't change as by that point the dns resolution has already taken place, and does not happen again.

I didn't check all the screens Paul posted so maybe he made you change some other settings as well, but dns alone doesn't make the interweb go faster :D.

I am wondering if those servers may also act as proxy servers with appropriate caches, hence speeding up the time taken for the sites to load??

Jim

[Guest vluther]

I am wondering if those servers may also act as proxy servers with appropriate caches, hence speeding up the time taken for the sites to load??

Jim

If someone has installed squid and configured the proxy, then sure, it's possible. But, DNS does not equate to proxy, and just because you changed your dns server, doesn't mean your browser's proxy settings have changed.

They may have the dns resolution cached for a longer period of time than some others, so the lookup is instantaneous. So it seems even fasterER :D.

[Guest Paul (MVP)]

Talk about over complicating things :D

- The tweak will work on any network anywhere in the world, whether you notice a difference will depend on whether the new DNS server is faster than the old one :D

- The tweak will only affect the connection you make the edit on

Oh, and i'll move to WM news now :D

P

[Guest jimbouk]

There we go. Simple.

The basics surely: if you click a link or try to open a favourite and your browser spends a few seconds saying "locating" then it may be worth doing.

You could change your wifi's dns servers - but you would do that on the router.