Vent: Finally got off my phone's default DNS and it fixed 80 percent of my buffering issues

I've been fighting with streaming for months now. Shows would load slow, buffers would freeze mid-scene. I tried everything. Reset my router, called my ISP twice, even bought one of those fancy mesh systems. Nothing helped. Then my nephew came over last weekend and asked if I ever changed my DNS settings on the phone itself. I told him no, I don't mess with that stuff. He showed me how to switch to Cloudflare's free one on my Android phone. It took maybe 2 minutes. Since then, I haven't had a single stutter on Netflix or Hulu. I feel kind of stupid for not trying this sooner. Has anyone else had this work for them or am I just lucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

jenny_lee9d ago

@nina_hall48 The IP address you wrote down upsets me for some reason... 8.8.8.8 just looks too perfect, like a set of matching numbers. Almost suspicious. Anyway, I switched to Cloudflare too after reading about it here and my phone finally loads YouTube without getting stuck on the spinning circle.

nina_hall4810d ago

Cloudflare DNS saved my sanity too, I was about to throw my tablet out the window. My nephew is the one who told me about it and I was honestly mad I didn't know sooner. It's wild how much the default ISP DNS can choke things up, especially during peak hours. You're not lucky, it's a real fix for a lot of people. Google's DNS (8.8.8.8) works great too if you ever need a backup.

ward.anna9d agoMost Upvoted

Oh come on, I'm gonna be the weird one here and say I actually went BACK to my ISP's default DNS after trying Cloudflare and Google. Everything felt fine at first, but then random sites started acting weird - like my bank's login page kept throwing errors and some streaming services wouldn't load at all. Turns out those public DNS servers sometimes route you to different servers than intended based on your location, and it caused all sorts of headaches for me. Plus I got spooked by the whole privacy thing - I'd rather my ISP have my browsing data than some random company, at least I signed a contract with them.