Do you need to reduce DNS Lookups to enhance the website loading speed?
There are several ways to optimize WordPress site for improving loading speed like caching, optimizing images, choosing SSD hosting, etc.
While performing website speed tests you might have noticed that almost every time you get the hint to reduce DNS Lookups. So we could consider that it is a crucial factor for enhancing the website loading time.
In this post, I will be covering it and will discuss how you can reduce DNS lookups.
What is DNS Lookup?
DNS stands for Domain Name System.
Each Domain points to an IP address and this IP address is crucial in making the site accessible to the browser and to build the connection.
However, these IP addresses are difficult for humans to memorize as the IP addresses are numerical. On the contrary, it is simple to memorize words, brandable, and also easy to track.
The DNS system is similar to a Phonebook with the data regarding what IP address the domain name points to.
So the time taken by the browser and the system to look for the domain’s IP address is DNS Lookup. The average time taken for DNS is about 20-120 ms.
Below I have posted two most popular speed test tools
These two tools will not only monitor your website performance but also suggests to reduce DNS lookups
Reduce DNS Lookups
Here are some tips to reduce DNS lookups
Use a Fast DNS provider
The most crucial thing for reducing DNS lookup is to use high-quality DNS provider. There are several DNS providers, paid and free.
Whenever you purchase domain names from any popular services like NameCheap, Namesilo, and GoDaddy you receive free DNS. However, these DNS providers are generally slow and DNS lookup time increases too.
On the other hand, there are DNS providers like Cloudflare and Amazon, with their point of presence (POPs) extending to several countries. Premium DNSs are not only fast but also have low latency.
Best DNS Providers :
- Google DNS
- Microsoft Azure
- Cloudflare
- Oracle
- Open DNS
- Akamai
- NS1
- Neustar
- Verisign
- Infoblox
Note: They are not sorted according to their efficiency
Reduce the number of domains
The fastest way to reduce DNS lookups is to reduce the number of hostnames. Find the number of separate domain requests and in case they are high, try to decrease the number.
Look out for a balance among speed and usability of the website
Faster Alternatives
For faster DNS lookup time you can’t remove important tools such as analytical tools, even if they have high DNS lookup time as it is crucial for understanding site metrics and know the number of visitors.
However, you can handle this issue by using alternative methods. You could find an alternative tool that does the same task.
You need to do research and need to compare the DNS lookup time of those tools prior to deploying them on site. As it is crucial to calculate how the tools will affect website loading speed.
DNS prefetching
DNS Prefetching lets the browser to quietly execute the DNS lookup in the background while the user is browsing the current page.
Whenever a person clicks on a link to open the next page, the page does not take time in looking for DNS. Therefore the page loads swiftly.
Quickly add the DNS prefetching with below tag
<link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://www.yourlink.com">This small link tag could make a difference in the landing speed of DNS.
I hope through this article you can reduce DNS lookups for your site. Additionally, you can go for 10GB Hosting’s plans that offer 99.9% uptime and lightning fast servers that can improve your website speed.