Eddie On Everything

Comcast DNS slow? Use these easy to remember DNS IPs

May 28, 2006 on 1:38 pm | In windows xp, PSA, internet |

I have Comcast cable at home. Overall, the service is pretty good - certainly light years better than the Verizon DSL to which I previously subscribed. One problem that Comcast is plagued by, however, is notoriously slow DNS servers.

For those of you non-technical folks out there, “DNS” stands for “Domain Name Service/System.” Think of it like a phone book for computers - when you type “yahoo.com” into your browser, your computer must first look up “yahoo.com” in the DNS to find the number it needs to “dial” to contact yahoo.com. Comcast has a history of running a slow phonebook. This means that even though they offer lightning fast connection speeds, your internet browsing can slow to a crawl waiting for these lookups to occur.

When I first ran into this problem a year ago, I reconfigured my router to use alternate DNS servers (I’m fortunate to have access to my company’s lightning-fast DNS servers) and forgot all about the problem. I recently installed a new router, though, and my old configuration was lost, meaning that the new router was once again using Comcast’s DNS servers. You’d think that they’d have fixed the problem after over a year, wouldn’t you?

You’d be wrong.

It took me about 10 minutes to notice a significant lag in my browsing, due to the apparently ever-present Comcast DNS problem. I did an internet search and found that I’m certainly not the only one who has noticed the ongoing problem. Fortunately, David Bau has a solution that everyone can use:

For future reference: if my DNS servers ever go out, I will use the following DNS servers with easy-to-remember IP addresses - thanks to AT+T and Level 3:

4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3, 4.2.2.4, 4.2.2.5, 4.2.2.6

Here in Pennsylvania, these servers are all just as close as Comcast’s DNS servers to me, < 20ms ping, and they are serving DNS faster today.

Awesome - Easy to remember AND very fast. If you’re a Comcast customer, I suggest that you start using these servers if you run into problems.