I lived in my previous apartment for more than seven years, and during most of that time, I used a small ISP that had a lot going for it. For starters, I paid the equivalent of $18, first for a 250/50Mbps plan and later for a 500/100Mbps plan, which was a great price no matter where you live, if you ask me. Better yet, I never signed a contract. I was on their prepaid plan, so when I moved apartments, I just let them know I no longer needed their service, returned the equipment, and that was it.

But about a year ago, when I moved to a new apartment, I had to switch ISPs. The two ISPs I was limited to couldn’t match what my previous provider offered, and I ultimately settled on a 300/30Mbps plan that also includes a bunch of TV channels because my new ISP doesn’t offer internet-only plans (sigh). It costs me the equivalent of $45 a month (another sigh). While I hadn’t used a custom DNS before—aside from on my phone—I decided to switch to one after signing the contract (the new ISP doesn’t offer a prepaid option either). As it turned out, switching to a custom DNS did more than just make my browsing more private.

I didn’t want my new ISP keeping a log of my DNS requests

The ISP I switched to isn’t a large company by global standards by any means, but it’s one of the biggest where I live. The catch is that it was bought out a while ago by a telecom company that doesn’t have the best reputation in my neck of the woods. While the two entities operate as separate brands, my ISP is a wholly owned subsidiary of the telecom company. For those reasons, I decided to switch to a custom DNS.

I want to share as little data with my current ISP as possible, and while I know that using a custom DNS won’t make my internet browsing fully private, it’s better than nothing. By using Cloudflare’s DNS—I ended up picking it after running the DNS Speed Test benchmark—with DNS over HTTPS on all my computers, I can at least prevent my ISP from seeing and logging my DNS queries, making it much harder for them to determine which websites I visit and potentially monetize that information.

So, shortly after I moved into my new apartment and got settled, I switched all my computers to Cloudflare’s DNS since the ISP router I was using at the time didn’t support custom DNS. It was very simple on Windows, but required jumping through a few hoops on my Mac mini because macOS doesn’t have a DNS over HTTPS toggle like Windows 11 does.

I’ve been using Cloudflare’s DNS for almost a year now, and I haven’t encountered any issues during that time. While I was worried that using a custom DNS would lead to intermittent issues (the AdGuard DNS I use on my phone has suffered a few outages over the years), that hasn’t been the case. My DNS queries are resolved almost instantly, and I can say I’m pretty satisfied with the switch. Better still, on top of the privacy benefits, using Cloudflare’s DNS came with a few other perks as well.

Switching to a custom DNS came with a few extra benefits

The first thing I noticed after switching to my new internet plan was that the webpages I visited loaded slightly (but noticeably) slower than they had in my previous apartment. The same was true when comparing page load times on my phone and my desktop PC.

So I ran the nslookup command in Command Prompt and discovered that my ISP’s DNS consistently timed out during DNS lookups. Cloudflare’s DNS didn’t exhibit the same behavior, and after switching, webpages started loading noticeably faster. So not only did I improve my privacy, but switching to a custom DNS also resulted in faster page loads, which is a most welcome perk.

Another benefit is that, by using Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.2 malware-blocking DNS, my browsing is also more secure than it was with my ISP’s DNS. So at the end of the day, switching to a custom DNS resulted in a threefold improvement: my browsing is more private, webpages load faster, and my browsing is more secure. Not too shabby.

It’s been almost a year since I switched to a custom DNS, and I’ve yet to encounter any issues. The webpages I visit load almost instantly, and my ISP has a much harder time determining which websites I visit. So, if you can, I recommend switching to a custom DNS as well. If your router supports it, I also recommend configuring your custom DNS there instead of setting it up on every device individually, something I couldn’t do at the time because I was using my ISP’s router, which doesn’t support custom DNS.