For some strange reason lately my laptop had been failing to resolve some host names. It didn’t happen all the time, but for example while browsing reddit, occasionally a link I would click will fail to resolve. Now, I had verified that the sites I am trying to visit were still up, so it seemed to be an issue on my end… I was still connected to the internet, and some sites (like google) would never fail to resolve. What gives?

I had a hunch that my router was the culprit, so firing up the admin page, I did a quick check and everything seemed to be in order. On a whim I decided however to change my router’s DNS server – DNS is the service that translates domain names into actual IP addresses, it’s sort of like an internet phone book: you look up bryanstamour.com and the DNS server tells you to go to 24.57.173.246 – from Cogeco’s servers to OpenDNS. I have heard good things about OpenDNS so I decided to give it a try. One day maybe I’ll build my own, but not now

And the results? So far, so good. Pages are resolving normally (and actually loading faster than before.) Was it an issue with Cogeco’s DNS server? or a problem with my router? We may never know, but the problem is solved, at least for the time being.