1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000 If you've ever been interested in boosting your internet speeds without paying extra for it... 2 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:08,000 Um, yes, please. 3 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:12,000 You may have seen that changing your DNS settings can help. 4 00:00:12,000 --> 00:00:19,000 But what the heck does DNS mean, and what kind of DNS can actually make your browser noticeably faster? 5 00:00:19,000 --> 00:00:24,000 DNS stands for Domain Name System, and it's a crucial part of how the web functions. 6 00:00:24,000 --> 00:00:30,000 The primary job of DNS is to take the host's name of a website, say YouTube.com, 7 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:34,000 and translate it into a numerical address called an IP address 8 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:39,000 that tells your computer what server it needs to connect to in order to load that web page. 9 00:00:39,000 --> 00:00:46,000 If you remember paper phone books, it's a little bit like how those would translate the name of a person or business 10 00:00:46,000 --> 00:00:49,000 into a phone number you could call to reach them. 11 00:00:49,000 --> 00:00:52,000 Or maybe you weren't born in the 20th century, I don't know. 12 00:00:52,000 --> 00:00:55,000 When you type in the name of a website, or even just click a link, 13 00:00:55,000 --> 00:00:59,000 your system sends a DNS query to determine the correct IP address. 14 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:06,000 But this process takes time, meaning a slow connection to a DNS server can result in delays before the page loads, 15 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:15,000 which we refer to as latency. But here's the thing, these days, most major internet service providers default to DNS servers that are pretty fast. 16 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:19,000 Although it's still possible to save time by changing to a faster DNS server 17 00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:22,000 if you're noticing frequent problems with loading websites, 18 00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:28,000 it's likely that this won't make much of a perceptible difference if you're only saving 10 or 20 milliseconds. 19 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:33,000 So does this mean that advice telling you to adjust your DNS is mostly useless? 20 00:01:33,000 --> 00:01:38,000 I'm not so fast. Instead of trying to shave off a few milliseconds of latency 21 00:01:38,000 --> 00:01:43,000 by changing to a commonly recommended public DNS, like Cloudflare or Google, 22 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:49,000 what might be more impactful is switching to a filtering DNS service that blocks ads. 23 00:01:49,000 --> 00:01:55,000 You see, when you load a webpage with ads, you aren't just making one DNS request for the actual website you're visiting. 24 00:01:55,000 --> 00:01:58,000 Instead, your system has to send lots of DNS requests, 25 00:01:58,000 --> 00:02:02,000 because the ads on that page often live on completely different domains. 26 00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:06,000 Not only does this add more latency since you're making additional requests, 27 00:02:06,000 --> 00:02:10,000 but loading all these ads can seriously slow down your browser's performance. 28 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:16,000 Even if they aren't that large in terms of file size, modern ads often involve lots of scripts. 29 00:02:16,000 --> 00:02:19,000 Basically, extra code your browser has to run, 30 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:22,000 which can make your browser feel sluggish or even non-responsive, 31 00:02:22,000 --> 00:02:26,000 and have even worse consequences if the script contains malware. 32 00:02:26,000 --> 00:02:32,000 This is a big part of the reason that some webpages on smartphones can be very frustrating to scroll through. 33 00:02:32,000 --> 00:02:35,000 Not only do all those ads take up a lot of screen real estate, 34 00:02:35,000 --> 00:02:39,000 but your phone's CPU can have a hard time keeping up with all those scripts. 35 00:02:39,000 --> 00:02:42,000 And this can be an issue on lower-end PCs as well. 36 00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:49,000 A filtering DNS service can mitigate this problem by blocking DNS requests to known advertising servers, 37 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:54,000 so none of these scripts or other junk from ads makes it to your PC or phone in the first place. 38 00:02:54,000 --> 00:03:00,000 But wait a sec, we already have ad blocking extensions in apps, so why would I want to use a filtering DNS? 39 00:03:00,000 --> 00:03:04,000 Well, one advantage you might want to consider is that because all you have to do to use a filtering DNS 40 00:03:04,000 --> 00:03:08,000 is change a setting in your operating system or on your router, 41 00:03:08,000 --> 00:03:16,000 there isn't any software overhead. Lightning the load on your CPU, reducing battery consumption, and decreasing the possibility of software bugs. 42 00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:19,000 And if we're talking specifically about a phone or a laptop, 43 00:03:19,000 --> 00:03:23,000 assigning a filtering DNS will protect you no matter where you take it, 44 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:30,000 instead of having it rely on whichever DNS server your cellular provider or a random public Wi-Fi network uses. 45 00:03:30,000 --> 00:03:35,000 We're going to link an article in the video description giving you instructions on how to change your DNS server. 46 00:03:35,000 --> 00:03:40,000 Don't worry, it's not hard. As well as a list of ad blocking DNS services you can try out for yourself. 47 00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:44,000 One thing to keep in mind though is that unlike ad blocking extensions, 48 00:03:44,000 --> 00:03:49,000 filtering DNS services can't clean up the webpage for you after blocking those ads. 49 00:03:49,000 --> 00:03:52,000 So you'll just see a blank space where the ad was supposed to go, 50 00:03:52,000 --> 00:03:56,000 leaving you wondering what kind of marvelous product you're missing out on hearing about. 51 00:03:56,000 --> 00:04:00,000 What if it was cool? What if I wanted it? Hey, that was a tech wiki. Thanks for watching. 52 00:04:00,000 --> 00:04:05,000 If you liked this video, check out our other video on how Chrome is crippling ad blocking extensions. 53 00:04:05,000 --> 00:04:10,000 Possibly making ad blocking DNS even more appealing. What a great recommendation!