Changing Your DNS
Written by Alan Thursday, 24 December 2009 08:00
Your first question is probably “Why would I want to?” There’s two major reasons. The first reason is speed. By default your DNS lookups are done by your ISP, which may not be the fastest choice. The second reason is safety. Using just any old DNS may lead you to a site that contains malware or take your kids to material you’d rather them not see.
Before going any further, let me give a very brief explanation of DNS. It stands for Domain Name Server and, basically, it’s a series of numbers that translate to a web address. You don’t normally see these numbers – this all happens in the background. The one exception that most people are familiar with is the home router. As you probably know, in order to access your router you type numbers into your browser’s address bar such as http://192.168.0.1. Each and every web site on the internet has 4 numbers like this that identify it.
There are many third-party providers of DNS that you can choose over the default one given by your ISP. The most popular, and the one I use, is OpenDNS. This is a free service and its big advantage is a set of web sites that are automatically blocked by default, making it especially good for those with children. That list is completely customizable so you can add or remove sites from it based on your personal preference. You can also customize the message displayed when someone tries to access a site on the list – “This web site blocked by Dad”.
1. The old, simple way of changing DNS is on your PC itself. To to this click Start => Control Panel => Network and Internet => Network and Sharing Center => Local Area Connection
2. Click Properties and click on Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and then choose Properties. Now click the radio button next to Use the following DNS server addresses. You can now enter the new DNS address which you obtained from whatever provider you have chosen to use.
3. If you have more that one PC in your home and use a router to provide internet access to them then you may want to change the DNS in your router rather than doing it on each individual PC. So, let’s access your router via whatever address was provided in the router’s documentation. Of course different models may vary, but what you are looking for is the setting for DNS. In the case of my Netgear it’s on the default page “Basic Settings”
4. Again, enter the address you obtained from your new choice of providers. That’s all there is to it.
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