Has anybody else found that using open DNS has dropped ping times?

[Undecided Adrian]

Since the several recommendations on this forum for using open DNS over the Sky DNS servers i have gone over to them with great results.

Not only is web browsing much faster but so is gaming my pings to the World Of Warcraft servers have dropped and my latency has gone down to around 80ms (very respectable).

My max delays haven't been changed and I was wondering if anybody else has seen such an improvement?

[bulldog]

Ive read about this a couple of times on here could someone explain it and give a link how to set it up

[Undecided Adrian]

The open DNS website is here:

OpenDNS | Providing A Safer And Faster Internet

and they explain nicely what is happening and how to set it up, there is also how to guides on these forums as well as stickies.

Put simply you tell your PC that you are using these guys servers to look up web addresses rather than Sky's one, your data still travels through the easynet network to get to them.

[hbdgaz]

So changing DNS server affects pings in games??

[James67]

So changing DNS server affects pings in games??

Very unlikely. I'll try to explain why.

Every device attached to the Internet has a numerical IP address, usually written as four numbers (between 0 and 255) separated by fullstops. For example, the computer that the SkyUser forum is run on has the address 77.240.11.57

It was difficult for Internet users to have to remember these numerical addresses, so at an early stage in the Internet's development, they came up with "domain names", that have two or more words (or abbreviations) separated by fullstops. Clearly, its easier to remember www.skyuser.co.uk rather than 77.240.11.57

But behind these domain names, the Internet still uses numerical addresses, so there has to be a system that translates the domain names into numerical addresses, and this is exactly what DNS does. When you type www.skyuser.co.uk into your web browser, you computer has to work out what the corresponding numerical address is, so it contacts one of Sky's DNS servers, and once it's been told what the address is, it can connect to the SkyUser website. The problem is, however, that those servers don't reply particularly quickly and these means there's a delay between you typing in the domain name, and the web browser actually displaying the page. Sometimes, the delay is so large, that the web browser actually gives up waiting, and tells you that the page can't be loaded. This is the main reason why people chose to use OpenDNS, because they seem to reply a fair bit quicker than Sky's own DNS servers.

To save DNS servers being swapped with requests, when you ask for the numerical address corresponding to a given domain name, the DNS server replies with not just the numerical address, but also a "time to live" value in seconds. This tells your PC how long that numerical address will be valid for. A common value for this is 86400 - the number of seconds in a day. What this means is that provided you don't reboot your PC, it will keep hold of that numerical address for anything up to a day, before trying to look up the domain name again.

The upshot of this is that the first time you ping a game server, there might be a short delay as your PC or console looks up the name of the server, but once it's got the numerical address, it won't have to do that look-up again (well, unless you've been playing for more than 24 hours). So this means that using OpenDNS won't actually improve your ping times, and if they appear to improve when you switch to OpenDNS, the only possible explanation is that it is a co-incidence.

[hbdgaz]

Thanks for the clarification I was vaguely aware how DNS worked, which was why I thought it a bit odd that changing DNS server would affect a game.

[wannabgeek]

Hi can you ps help me: I have got really bad lag when playing cod4 online, ive tried alll the fixes is: replacing master with newer box, my router connected via ethernet but still high pings. I have tried to get max delays reduced with no joy because the 3 times ive rung CS ive spoke to India who dont know what i mean and will not forward me on to technical advisers. I cannot log into the sky portal to do this via email (ticket) so i am rather stuck!! Thanks

PS am looking into allowing PS3 on my router (DMZ)