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The secret to making your Xbox One snappier and quicker!

E92 M3

Member
This has been discussed in the dashboard preview thread, but here is one secret your internet provider doesn't want you to know: You can change the DNS settings on your Xbox One to Google's and watch how quickly everything loads. Roughly, I shaved about 5 seconds (if not more) off loading app data. It truly is simple and efficient.

Use this tool to discover the most efficient DNS settings for your location and internet provider:

It's called namebench and will show you the best settings to use.

There is absolutely no harm in trying this, and if for some reason it doesn't speed up your OS, then I am a sorry panda.

Testimonials:

Did it! Indeed looks considerably faster! Will run more tests!

I did this last night and apparently the DNS Fios routes me too was the wrong one. Switched to their other one and everything loads immediately. Literally no hesitation. One guide is up immediately.

It's unreal. Everyone needs to do this and the MS team needs to have a functionality on console to help people.

Did this last week, didn't time anything, but it does feel snappier.

Wow. So it helped speed my xbox up a lot. I honestly did not expect it to be that helpful. Somehow my NAT is open now...
 

TK Turk

Banned
My dashboard actually got slower with google DNS, so I switched it back to auto...

*EDIT* With that being said, I have multiple friends and a brother that significantly increased the performance of their dashboard using this trick. My bro used to complain all the time about how bad the UI was, I thought he was just a whiner. He said the UI is great now, a good 5 to 10 times faster.
 

E92 M3

Member
My dashboard actually got slower with google DNS, so I switched it back to auto...

*EDIT* With that being said, I have multiple friends and a brother that significantly increased the performance of their dashboard using this trick. My bro used to complain all the time about how bad the UI was, I thought he was just a whiner. He said the UI is great now, a good 5 to 10 times faster.

Yes, everyone should just use namebench for the best DNS settings. It will give you primary, secondary and tertiary.
 

driver116

Member
Generally, your ISP's DNS server is the quickest as it's closest to you. If you use Google's, the DNS lookup goes to your ISP anyway it'd is then forwarded to Google's DNS server.
 

danielcw

Member
but here is one secret your internet provider doesn't want you to know:

That sound like clickbaiting.
Why would the ISP want you to not know that?
Besides, it is not really a secret, it's just that many people don't care.

Also how many DNS-queries does the dashboard make?
Couldn't the results be cached by the xbox or your router anyway?


Generally, your ISP's DNS server is the quickest as it's closest to you. If you use Google's, the DNS lookup goes to your ISP anyway it'd is then forwarded to Google's DNS server.

No, if you use google's DNS server, your ISP's DNS server shouldn't be used.
 

E92 M3

Member
That sound like clickbaiting.
Why would the ISP want you to not know that?
Besides, it is not really a secret, it's just that many people don't care.

Also how many DNS-queries does the dashboard make?
Couldn't the results be cached by the xbox or your router anyway?

That's the goal - for the sake of Tuesday morning comedy lol. Guess it fell flat?

The ISP DNS isn't always the best, that's why I linked to namebench. It's a little tool that will determine the best settings for your individual needs.
 

E92 M3

Member
Do you just change the DNS settings in the Xbox One or your router too?

Yes, go into the settings and just adjust the settings. If you like what you see, you can change your router settings. I'd experiment with individual cases first.

Why on earth would this make things go faster? What the fuck?

Because the app data loads individually of the actual OS speed. Ever notice that little circle spinning before messages or friends show?
 

danielcw

Member
The request is forwarded when it reaches your ISP. Keyword.

No, the DNS server (i.e.: google) you set in your network settings is contacted directly.
i.e.: one of google's servers is contacted directly by your devices. your ISP may be involved because of anycasting, but that is a routing issue, and not part of DNS

That's the goal - for the sake of Tuesday morning comedy lol. Guess it fell flat?

The ISP DNS isn't always the best, that's why I linked to namebench. It's a little tool that will determine the best settings for your individual needs.

I actually think it might be an interesting tool,
but it shouldn't be that big of a difference.
And unsurprisingly, it just told me, that my router is the fastest DNS server for me.
 

E92 M3

Member
I actually think it might be an interesting tool,
but it shouldn't be that big of a difference.
And unsurprisingly, it just told me, that my router is the fastest DNS server for me.

Made a big difference for me, mine wasn't set to the most efficient.

So i just need to go to the network settings on the One and put the DNS IP of google, the "8.8...."?

Yes, but use namebench beforehand to make sure you get the best DNS settings.
 
That sound like clickbaiting.
Why would the ISP want you to not know that?
Also how many DNS-queries does the dashboard make?
Couldn't the results be cached by the xbox or your router anyway?

The number one reason isps don't want you to do that is support calls. If their dns goes down, they know about it and can quickly route those affected to a voice message explaining the outage. If somebody else's dns goes down, they don't know and they end up having you take up a tech's time for something that was out of their control.

I don't know about the One but the 360 didn't cache anything in terms of dns and each one of those boxes ends up in a dns call.


Why on earth would this make things go faster? What the fuck?

If the DNS server you connect to is slow or bogged down with requests, it just makes the transaction take longer.
 

driver116

Member
No, the DNS server (i.e.: google) you set in your network settings is contacted directly.
i.e.: one of google's servers is contacted directly by your devices. your ISP may be involved because of anycasting, but that is a routing issue, and not part of DNS

You're missing the main point that by redirecting the request to another server further away from your ISP, you're increasing the round trip time. If your ISP is 10 miles away and Google's nearest DNS server is 1000 miles away, the quickest lookup would be to use the ISP.
 

Reallink

Member
You're missing the main point that by redirecting the request to another server further away from your ISP, you're increasing the round trip time. If your ISP is 10 miles away and Google's nearest DNS server is 1000 miles away, the quickest lookup would be to use the ISP.

Run namebench and see which is faster consistently. Most people set this up in their router so all the traffic goes through google dns or whoever. Setting it up per device is silly so I don't know why the op is advocating doing it in the xbone specifically.
 

Hubble

Member
Thanks, OP. I ran namebench and it says Google Public DNS 2 is 15.2% faster than my current settings. I pay for the highest internet package here and always felt my internet speed was funky and can be better. I changed it and will do the same for my router. I haven't had too much time with the Xbox One but it does seem to be a little quicker.
 

malfcn

Member
I've had a theory about pins. In another thread someone shared a pin tile that was 1080p. If you have 10-15+ couldn't that allow things down? Or is that a planned resource usage?
 

JaggedSac

Member
You're missing the main point that by redirecting the request to another server further away from your ISP, you're increasing the round trip time. If your ISP is 10 miles away and Google's nearest DNS server is 1000 miles away, the quickest lookup would be to use the ISP.

Damn, someone should tell Google that their page that describes the possible benefits of this is bunk.
 
If you know how to change the DNS servers in your router then you may not have to make any changes in other devices and they will all benefit.

You're missing the main point that by redirecting the request to another server further away from your ISP, you're increasing the round trip time. If your ISP is 10 miles away and Google's nearest DNS server is 1000 miles away, the quickest lookup would be to use the ISP.

But if your ISP's DNS servers are slow as shit (i.e. Charter) then this can be a nice improvement, despite the further distance the packets travel. It's best to use the tool to test and see.

Does this work exclusively for X1? What about PS4 or Wii U?

It could improve performance in any device that makes frequent data requests from the cloud so yes, it could help PS4 or WiiU load things a little faster, but those systems aren't pulling as much UI information from the cloud at once so it won't be as noticeable.
 
I did this last night and apparently the DNS Fios routes me too was the wrong one. Switched to their other one and everything loads immediately. Literally no hesitation. One guide is up immediately.

It's unreal. Everyone needs to do this and the MS team needs to have a functionality on console to help people.
 

Spazo

Member
just did the test with the app and OpenDNS was 35% faster than my ISP DNS

Will I really see a difference ?
 

artsi

Member
Switching DNS can be an improvement if the ISP has fucked up badly with their own systems. But I've seen people even claim they get better torrent DL speeds which is nuts, since it works directly with IP addresses without any domain name resolution.
 

Special C

Member
So I'm a networking idiot, but If I have a 100 MB Up/Down Fiber Optic service should I even bother? Or is this DNS thing independent of my internet speeds.
 
just did the test with the app and OpenDNS was 35% faster than my ISP DNS

Will I really see a difference ?

You will see a significant increase on traditional browsing and small downloads. Large files and streaming? No due to how that traffic is handled.
 
Sorta off topic, but this practice does work quite well. I had terrible download speeds with my ps3 when I had ATT. I changed my DNS to use openDNS server and everything was better and I was downloading at the speed I was paying for. DNS settings can make a huge different in performance for both intra and internet traffic.
 

Shylock

Member
I always go back on forth on this -- the quicker name resolution certainly makes things snappier on first load, but I worry that it'll break websites that utilize CDN, and I'll end up with fast name lookups, but the actual downloads/streams will suffer because I'm not pulling from a local cache.
 

double jump

you haven't lived until a random little kid ask you "how do you make love".
Does this work exclusively for X1? What about PS4 or Wii U?
Heck what about ps3 as well ? I'd give anything to speed up the psn store.
Sorta off topic, but this practice does work quite well. I had terrible download speeds with my ps3 when I had ATT. I changed my DNS to use openDNS server and everything was better and I was downloading at the speed I was paying for. DNS settings can make a huge different in performance for both intra and internet traffic.
Guess I got my answer.
 

Odah

Banned
Today I shaved off my beard and now everything loads 5 seconds quicker!



but nice tip! will try it out
 

EvB

Member
I always go back on forth on this -- the quicker name resolution certainly makes things snappier on first load, but I worry that it'll break websites that utilize CDN, and I'll end up with fast name lookups, but the actual downloads/streams will suffer because I'm not pulling from a local cache.

Also you may be redirected to a busier CDN server and your download speed will suffer.
 

justino

Neo Member
I changed my settings on my router using namebench when my ISP's DNS servers went down and it made a *slight* improvement in loading HTML pages.

I can't see how it can be a number of times faster - DNS is simply a lookup/match server for urls to ip addresses. Google's are probably more robust than most - but once the match is made there will be no difference in how fast data/content is transferred between you and the identified source.
 
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