Even with the FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) connection I still feel that my internet connection speed is not that blazing fast. Have you ever felt the same with your internet connection as well? Follow this simple Windows hack to speed up your internet connection and to experience a faster, better and secure internet browsing experience.

If you’d like some technical backgrounds of why this hack will improve and secure your internet browsing experience then read this paragraph. I’m not going to go into too much details but here are the basics.

Most of the browsing or your internet connection bottlenecks happen when you make a request for a domain name and the Domain Name Servers (DNS Servers) are too busy to not quickly respond back to your request to resolve the domain name to an IP address. No matter how much speed your ISP claims you’ll face this bottleneck if you rely on the age-old DNS Servers.

OpenDNS is a free Domain Name Service that does more than just resolve the domain names for you. Once registered (free and simple registration) you get quite a lot of control on how you manage your web browsing experience. Here are some of cool features of Open DNS that might convince you to make the switch (at least these made me to switch and I don’t regret at all),

• Super Fast Internet Access: With DNS servers spread across the globe OpenDNS  quickly routes your requests to a nearby DNS Server and that gives you a huge performance boost.
• Secure Internet Access: OpenDNS works with PhishTank, the Web’s most trusted source of phishing data and the community that flags the phishing sites are very active to keep up-to-date on the phishing sites. When you enter a domain name that’s a phishing website OpenDNS warns you with a page before taking you to the actual page. Modern browsers have inbuilt phishing protection but this would one more level of protection.
• Content Filtering: You can set filters on at the DNS level to filter out the websites that you don’t want your family to watch. You can adjust the predefined filter settings of High, Moderate, Low, Minimal or you can adjust the level of filtering for each setting. This gives you a fantastic control on how you want the content delivered on to your home network be filtered out. You can also block out a list of domains that you don’t want to be served to your home network. Parents beware!
• Browsing History: Don’t panic, ONLY if you turn on this feature at OpenDNS you get the ability to get historic information about the network’s browsing history.
• Custom Logo and Custom Page Not Found Messages: When you search for a domain that’s not in existence OpenDNS informs you with a page that you can customize to include your own message and logo. Instead of seeing your ISP’s boring 404 Page Not Found page you can spruce up your own pages.
• Automatic Typo Correction: When you accidentally type-in a wrong domain name extension like for example (.cmo instead of .com) OpenDNS automatically corrects the mistake and saves you time and frustration.
• Domain Shortcuts: OpenDNS allows you to create shortcuts for your most visited or hard to type websites so you can get to them easily by typing the shortcut name, for example, if you create a shortcut as “DG” in OpenDNS you can get to DemoGeek.com by just typing DG on your browser’s address bar. Very handy feature.

And much more features that would probably convince you to switch to OpenDNS for your network’s DNS needs.

Now, having said all the goodies about OpenDNS, how would you make the switch to OpenDNS? It’s pretty simple if you follow these steps,

Step-1: Open Control Panel

Click on the “Start” button and then click on the “Control Panel” menu option.

Step-2: View network status and tasks

Click on the “View network status and tasks” link under “Network and Internet”.

Step-3: View the status of your network connection

On the “Network and Sharing Center” dialog click on the “View Status” link next to your active network connection.

Step-4: Network Connection Properties

On the “Local Area Connection Status” dialog click on the “Properties” button.

Step-5: Choose TCP/IPv4 Properties

Continue thru the Windows Vista UAC prompt and select “Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)” on the list. Hit the “Properties” button.

Step-6: Use specific DNS address provided by OpenDNS

Windows will display the IPv4 properties for your network and by default “Obtain an IP address automatically” and “Obtain DNS server address automatically” will be selected.

Leave the “Obtain an IP address automatically” option as it is and change the DNS option to “Use the following DNS server addresses:” and key-in these entries (as shown above as well),

Preferred DNS Server: 208.67.222.222

Alternate DNS Server: 208.67.220.220

Then hit the OK buttons on all the open dialogs to close them.

That’s it. You are now on OpenDNS! Go ahead and register for a free account at OpenDNS and enjoy the new control and features that you have on your network.

Above if you see a graphic of “Use OpenDNS Get Started” then that means you are not on OpenDNS. Follow the above steps to experience a new browsing experience. Give it a try.

If things doesn’t work or if (for some reason) you experience slower page loads then you can obviously revert back the settings to obtain the DNS server address automatically.

Hope this helps and I hope your internet connection speed increases with this hack and I hope you experience a better browsing/faster internet experience with OpenDNS. If you have any questions regarding this please make sure to ask in comments.