Ways to Tweak your Network and Internet Connections - Part 1

There are many ways to improve and speed up your Internet Connections: upgrade your Internet access service to a much bigger bandwidth which speeds up everything, find a provider nearest you (DSL lines), change your networking equipment, and by performing some tweaks that offer ways to potentially enhance your network connections in Windows Vista.

DNS (Domain Name Server), A Software running on a web server, that handles translation of domain names [www.UnlockForUs.Blogspot.com] into IP addresses [72.14.207.191].

1. Ultimate DNS Tweak: Use OpenDNS

Free yourself of DNS-related Internet problems. Ultimately, speed up your Internet surfing!

When we type www.unlockforus.blogspot.com [domain name] in the web address, local ISP DNS servers translate that into an IP address [72.14.207.191]. There is a possibility that this is the main reason for slow Internet access. Thus, changing your DNS server addresses to a more reliable but free service called OpenDNS is recommended!

 

How? Open the Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center, On the Left-side portion, click Manage Network Connections > Right-click the Network adapter > Status > Properties > Internet Protocol Version 4 > Properties > Click "Use the following DNS server addresses:" and enter the values shown above. That's it!

Note: In some cases, these settings will remove your Internet connections  after reboot. You need to remove the DNS setting to restore you're Internet connections.

2. Disable Failed DNS Caching and Clear the DNS Cache

DNS problems may stop you from being able to visit Web sites. Sometimes due to Negative entries, DNS lookups failed to connect to websites.

a. Disabling failed DNS caching, Windows will not cache failed DNS lookups. It will go back and reload web pages that might have been only temporarily unavailable.

HOW-TO:

1. Use WinBubble, In just two clicks it will Disable Failed DNS Caching.  Go to Miscellaneous Tweaks Tab > Check "Disable Failed DNS Caching" > Click the Apply Button.
2. Manually apply the registry trick, : Open the Regedit > Go to
   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters > Right-click in the Parameter registry folder, and then select New > DWORD Value, Name it NetFailureCacheTime, and then press Enter. Create another two entries called NegativeSOACacheTime and MaxNegativeCacheTtl, verify if their value is 0 and 
   Reboot your PC.
   Note: To restore, just delete the three entries and reboot your computer.

b. Flushing the DNS cache
DNS entries are cached for faster lookup. But Sometimes, you need to clear these especially when you did not disable failed DNS caching. Your other option is to wait until it expires and flushes the entry automatically, which typically takes about 24 hours. Anyway, If you've cleared this cache, your system will run in a clean sheet.

To clear the DNS cache: 
1. Open a command prompt window as Administrator.
2. Type ipconfig /flushDNS

To display entries in DNS cache:  ipconfig /displaydns

If you're a forgetful person and you don't want to memorize these things, use Winbubble and create a tool:

Here:  How to Create your Own Tweaking ToolBox

NEXT:

• Simple Ways to Tweak your Network and Internet Connections - Part 2