I have recently had some issues with my ISP. After long complaining they finally agreed to reroute my connection to a closer switch increasing my theoretic max bandwith from 6Mb/s to 18Mb/s. No fios available on this area yet though..
However I still noticed lagging while browsing the internet even after directing my dhcp server to use google/opendns instead of the native ISP dns. I found instructions on how to set up native dns caching inside OSX Lion / Mountain Lion and would you know it, the web pages now open at least 10 times faster than before.
All that is required is a few keystrokes in terminal:
sudo pico /etc/named.conf
in there add these lines inside the options { } section:
forwarders {
8.8.8.8;
8.8.4.4;
}
As usual, experiment at your own risk and use caution!
Almost the same can be achieved on windows by manually overriding your ISP dns settings through gui:
http://www.labnol.org/internet/setup-google-dns-servers/11439/A tool to check which dns is fastest for you:
http://www.grc.com/dns/benchmark.htm
