[Discuss] OT - Increased WiFi Speeds After DNS Change

[me at mattgillen.net (Matthew Gillen)]

On 7/18/2020 6:27 PM, Dan Ritter wrote:
> epp at null.net wrote: 
>> I decided to try out Cloudflare's DNS service (1.1.1.1). As the Comcast gateway will not let the user change the DNS settings in it, I plugged a router into the gateway and input Cloudflare's addresses into it. For added measure, I also set the WiFi connection from the Android to the router to use a static IP address and also manually input the same DNS' for the connection. In using the router, I am losing IPv6. The router supports it, but I was not able to establish a successful IPv6 connection with it.
>>
>> The speeds via an Ethernet connection from the router did not change using 1.1.1.1, although I noticed a 10% increase in both download and upload speeds via WiFi, using both Ookla's Speedtest app and the speedof.me web site. Prior to this - connecting directly through the Comcast gateway but also using Comcast's DNS' through the router, the phone displayed download speeds of 50Mbps and upload speeds of 11Mbps. Using 1.1.1.1 via WiFi, I am now seeing download speeds approaching 56Mbps and upload speeds approaching 13Mbps, via the same app and web site. This is all via 2.4GHz.
>>
>> It is possible that just by changing the DNS service, it resulted in this increase in WiFi speeds?
> 
> No. You changed the Comcast hardware out for some other
> hardware. A 10% change is well within normal parameters.

Typically a speedtest would only do one (or a few) DNS lookup(s) at the
beginning of the test.  So any change in latency for that part would be
completely drowned out by the test of the test.

Also, I wouldn't necessarily trust speeedtest anymore.  They are owned
by comcast.  Fast.com uses netflix's same cloud infrastructure, so if
you want to know what throttling your ISP might actually be putting in
place, that is probably more reliable.

Thanks,
Matt