This went over my head, what does it mean,
"(I generally find the OpenDNS DNS servers to be faster than the ISP's own DNS servers)"
Just to be sure we are all on the same page, I will begin my response at the very beginning. If you already know some of this, please bear with me, I will get to the point — eventually. The links are mostly to Wikipedia articles that provide a lot more detail than I have either time or inclination to go into here. Depending on how deep you want to go they will provide a lot more background and detail.
DNS (
Domain Name System) is the service that translates a URL (
Uniform Resource Locator) such as finetunedmac.com into the IP address (
Internet Protocol address) that is used by the internet to route traffic,
ie. 68.178.234.219.
Since most services use DHCP (
Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) to obtain the network settings such as your IP address, your
Subnet Mask, and the IP address of the DNS server, the DNS server you use is pretty much invisible to you. Nominally all DNS servers around the world share their information with one another and all supposedly have the same URL/IP linkage. (
NOTE: there are hostile DNS servers that attempt to hijack URLs and IP routings for nefarious purposes but Tacit is far better informed on that than I am and that is another topic altogether.) The bad guys aside the DNS servers provide a lot of services and effect how your traffic is routed. Additionally the speed of the DNS server hardware and software can make a noticeable difference in how quickly your request reaches a site which
appears to you as a concomitant element of network speed.
You can, and I do, override the the DNS server settings received from your ISP's DHCP server and use alternate, perhaps faster and/or more routing neutral "public" DNS services. A Google search for "public DNS" will turn up a number of free public DNS servers including Google. The one I use is perhaps the most popular,
OpenDNS. Most of these public DNS sites provide detailed instructions on how to configure your system, including Macs, to use their servers instead of the ISP's so I won't go into all of that.
NOTE: I used so many links to various Wikipedia articles in this post I felt guilty and ended up making a contribution. Hopefully, if you find these articles as useful and informative as I did, you too might be moved to contribute as well. Every contribution, no matter how small, helps keep a valuable service available for all of us.