Monday, April 29, 2013

How to configure your DNS settings on Android

There are 2 ways to change your DNS on Android devices:

a) change the DNS servers of a VPN connection
When using this way, the DNS servers you enter only get used while the VPN connection you set it for is active.

Open "Settings", then navigate to "More..." -> "VPN".
When connecting via PPTP or L2TP from your Android device, you should have at least 1 connection listed here.
If not, see our article Android for instructions on how to create them.
Tap and hold your VPN connection, then select "Edit profile".
Check "Show advanced options" - more options will appear.
Here, enter your DNS servers separeted with a space at "DNS servers (e.g. 8.8.8.8)"
For example, you could enter here "8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4" or just "8.8.8.8".
Hit "Save".
When now connecting with this VPN profile, your Android device will use the DNS servers you entered.

b) change the default DNS servers
When using this way, the DNS servers you enter only get used while no VPN connection is active.
To be able to change the default DNS servers your device is using, you might need root (if "Set DNS" fails without root)
The easiest way to do this is to use e.g. the app "Set DNS" from
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.mytechie.setDNS
The other way to do this is to manually edit the file /etc/resolv.conf after removing its write protection.
This can be done either with a terminal app like Android Terminal Emulator (via vi or other command-line based text editors),
or you can use your favorite text editor, as long as it can access the root folder /etc

How to configure your DNS settings on iOS

In this example we'll set our iOS device (iPhone, iPad, etc.) to use Googles DNS servers (8.8.8.8 + 8.8.4.4). This gives a potential increase in speed - note that this can only be done when using WiFi connection. Open up the settings on your iOS device and navigate to the WiFi settings.
Select the WLAN network you're connected to and tap the blue arrow next to it.
Here, change the DNS settings to Googles DNS servers by tapping on the line "DNS"
In this DNS field, enter 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 (comma and space are important!) Go back to previous screen and press the Home button. That's all :)

How to configure your DNS settings on Mac

Short: System Preference > Network > Airport (WiFi) or Ethernet (LAN) > Advanced.. > DNS > under DNS Servers click the + button > Add 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 (or any other IPs from the list below) > OK
When you're on your desktop, click the Mac Apple, then click on "System Preferences". The System Preferences window will appear. Click on "Network" here.
Now you'll see the Network center. Select your ethernet adapter here on the left, then click on "Advanced..."
Click on the "DNS"-tab. Now you can add DNS servers by clicking on the "+" in the bottom left.
Add the desired DNS servers: OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222 + 208.67.220.220 ComodoDNS: 156.154.70.22 + 156.154.71.22 GoogleDNS: 8.8.4.4 + 8.8.8.8 UltraDNS: 156.154.70.1 + 156.154.71.1 NortonDNS: 198.153.192.1 + 198.153.194.1 Once finished, click on "OK" at the bottom right of this window.
Back in the network center, you'll see that the newly added DNS servers now appear right next to "DNS Server:" - so it's done now. Click on "Apply" at the bottom right to save your changes. You've successfully changed your DNS settings.

How to configure your DNS settings on Windows


This tells your computer which DNS to use for all your internet browsing. Most home users have this set to "automatic" and the DNS is provided by the user's internet provider, but you can use any DNS you like. How to change your DNS settings on Windows is explained below: Navigate to your system control panel, e.g. through the start menu. If it looks like on the window on the right - select "View network status and tasks" here. If you have a list view in the control panel, select "Network and sharing center"
Now, arrived in the Network and Sharing Center, click on "Change adapter settings" on the left.
Now a window that lists all your network adapters will appear. Select your main network adapter (either LAN or WLAN, depends on what you're using), rightclick it and select "Properties".
Here in the properties of your network adapter, select Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) and click on "Properties"
You'll now see the advanced properties of the TCP/IPv4 settings. Don't change anything in the upper field regarding IP, Subnet or Gateway. Select "Use the following DNS server addresses:" And enter 2 DNS servers of your choice here. When using HMA Pro VPN, it's recommended to use OpenDNS. OpenDNS: 208.67.222.222 + 208.67.220.220 ComodoDNS: 156.154.70.22 + 156.154.71.22 GoogleDNS: 8.8.4.4 + 8.8.8.8 UltraDNS: 156.154.70.1 + 156.154.71.1 NortonDNS: 198.153.192.1 + 198.153.194.1 Click on "OK". That's it!

100 tips for speeding up your computer

There are probably a lot of great tweaks and performance hacks that I’ve missed here, so feel free to chime in with comments.

For information about tweaking your network and TCP/IP settings for increasing your internet connection speed, check out the article "Speed".

1. Defragment your computer hard disk using free tools like SmartDefrag or UltraDefrag.

2. You should also defragment your Windows pagefile and registry.

3. Clean up hard drive disk space being taken up by temporary files, the recycle bin, hibernation and more. You can also use a tool like TreeSize to determine what is taking up space on your hard drive.

4. Load up Windows faster by using Startup Delayer, a free program that will speed up the boot time of Windows by delaying the startup of programs.

5. Speaking of startup programs, many of them are useless and can be turned off. Use the MSCONFIG utility to disable startup programs.

6. By default, the size of the paging file is controlled by Windows, which can cause defragmentation. Also, the paging file should be on a different hard drive or partition than the boot partition. Read here on the rules for best paging file performance.

7. In Windows XP and Vista, the Windows Search indexing service is turned on for all local hard drives. Turning off indexing is a simple way to increase performance.

8. If you don’t care about all the fancy visual effects in Windows, you can turn them off by going to Performance Options.

9. You can optimize the Windows boot time using a free program called Bootvis from Microsoft.

10. Clean your registry by removing broken shortcuts, missing shared DLLs, invalid paths, invalid installer references and more. Read about the 10 best and free registry cleaners.

11. One of the main reasons why PC’s are slow is because of spyware. There are many programs to remove spyware including Ad-Aware, Giant Antispyware, SUPERAntiSpyware, and more.

12. If you have a deeper spyware infection that is very hard to remove, you can use HijackThis to remove spyware.

13. Remove unwanted pre-installed software (aka junk software) from your new PC using PC Decrapifier.

14. Disable unnecessary Windows services, settings, and programs that slow down your computer.

15. Tweak Windows XP and tweak Windows Vista settings using free programs

16. Disable UAC (User Account Control) in Windows Vista

17. Tweak your mouse settings so that you can copy and paste faster, scroll faster, navigate quickly while browsing and more. Read here to learn how to tweak your mouse.

18. Delete temporary and unused files on your computer using a free program like CCleaner. It can also fix issues with your registry.

19. Delete your Internet browsing history, temporary Internet files, cookies to free up disk space.

20. Clean out the Windows prefetch folder to improve performance.

21. Disable the XP boot logo to speed up Windows boot time.

22. Reduce the number of fonts that your computer has to load up on startup.

23. Force Windows to unload DLLs from memory to free up RAM.

24. Run DOS programs in separate memory spaces for better performance.

25. Turn off system restore only if you regularly backup your Windows machine using third party software.

26. Move or change the location of your My Documents folder so that it is on a separate partition or hard drive.

27. Turn off default disk performance monitors on Windows XP to increase performance.

28. Speed up boot time by disabling unused ports on your Windows machine.

29. Use Process Lasso to speed up your computer by allowing it to make sure that no one process can completely overtake the CPU.

30. Make icons appear faster while browsing in My Computer by disabling search for network files and printers.

31. Speed up browsing of pictures and videos in Windows Vista by disabling the Vista thumbnails cache.

32. Edit the right-click context menu in Windows XP and Vista and remove unnecessary items to increase display speed.

33. Use the Windows Performance Toolkit and the trace logs to speed up Windows boot time.

34. Speed up your Internet browsing by using an external DNS server such as OpenDNS.

35. Improve Vista performance by using ReadyBoost, a new feature whereby Vista can use the free space on your USB drive as a caching mechanism.

36. If you have a slow Internet connection, you can browse web pages faster using a service called Finch, which converts it into simple text.

37. Use Vista Services Optimizer to disable unnecessary services in Vista safely.

38. Also, check out my list of web accelerators, which are programs that try to prefetch and cache the sites you are going to visit.

39. Speed up Mozilla Firefox by tweaking the configuration settings and by installing an add-on called FasterFox.

40. Learn how to build your own computer with the fastest parts and best hardware.

41. Use a program called TeraCopy to speed up file copying in Windows XP and Vista.

42. Disable automatic Last Access Timestamp to speed up Windows XP.

43. Speed up the Start Menu in Vista by hacking the MenuShowDelay key in the registry.

44. Increase the FileSystem memory cache in Vista to utilize a system with a large amount of RAM.

45. Install more RAM if you are running XP with less than 512 MB or Vista with less than 1 GB of RAM.

46. Shut down XP faster by reducing the wait time to kill hung applications.

47. Make sure that you have selected “Adjust for best performance” on the Performance tab in System Properties.

48. If you are reinstalling Windows, make sure that you partition your hard drives correctly to maximize performance.

49. Use Altiris software virtualization to install all of your programs into a virtual layer that does not affect the registry or system files.

50. Create and install virtual machines for free and install junk program, games, etc into the virtual machines instead of the host operating system. Check out Sun openxVM.

51. Do not clear your paging file during shutdown unless it is needed for security purposes. Clearing the paging file slows down shutdown.

52. If your XP or Vista computer is not using NFTS, make sure you convert your FAT disk to the NTFS file system.

53. Update all of your drivers in Windows, including chipset and motherboard drivers to their latest versions.

54. Every once in a while run the built-in Windows Disk Cleanup utility.

55. Enable DMA mode in Windows XP for IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers in Device Manager.

56. Remove unnecessary or old programs from the Add/Remove dialog of the Control Panel.

57. Use a program click memtest86 or Prime95 to check for bad memory on your PC.

58. Determine your BIOS version and check the manufactures website to see if you need to update your BIOS.

59. Every once in a while, clean your mouse, keyboard and computer fans of dust and other buildup.

60. Replace a slow hard drive with a faster 7200 RPM drive, SATA drive, or SAS drive.

61. Changing from Master/Slave to Cable Select on your hard drive configuration can significantly decrease your boot time.

62. Perform a virus scan on your computer regularly. If you don’t want to install virus protection, use some of the free online virus scanners.

63. Remove extra toolbars from your Windows taskbar and from your Internet browser.

64. Disable the Windows Vista Sidebar if you’re not really using it for anything important. All those gadgets take up memory and processing power.

65. If you have a SATA drive and you’re running Windows Vista, you can speed up your PC by enabling the advanced write caching features.

66. Learn how to use keyboard shortcuts for Windows, Microsoft Word, Outlook, or create your own keyboard shortcuts.

67. Turn off the Aero visual effects in Windows Vista to increase computer performance.

68. If you are technically savvy and don’t mind taking a few risks, you can try to overclock your processor.

69. Speed up the Send To menu in Explorer by typing “sendto” in the Run dialog box and deleting unnecessary items.

70. Make sure to download all the latest Windows Updates, Service Packs, and hot fixes as they “normally” help your computer work better.

71. Make sure that there are no bad sectors or other errors on your hard drive by using the ScanDisk orchkdsk utility.

72. If you are not using some of the hardware on your computer, i.e. floppy drive, CD-ROM drive, USB ports, IR ports, Firewire, etc, then go into your BIOS and disable them so that they do not use any power and do not have to be loaded during boot up.

73. If you have never used the Recent Documents feature in Windows, then disable it completely as a long list can affect PC performance.

74. One basic tweak that can help in performance is to disable error reporting in Windows XP

75. If you don’t care about a pretty interface, you should use the Windows Classic theme under Display Properties.

76. Disable short filenames if you are using NTFS by running the following command: fsutil behavior set disable8dot3 1. It will speed up the file creation process.

77. If you have lots of files in a single folder, it can slow down Explorer. It’s best to create multiple folders and spread out the files between the folders.

78. If you have files that are generally large, you might want to consider increasing the cluster size on NTFS to 16K or even 32K instead of 4K. This will help speed up opening of files.

79. If you have more than one disk in your PC, you can increase performance by moving your paging file to the second drive and formatting the volume using FAT32 instead of NTFS.

80. Turn off unnecessary features in Vista by going to Control Panel, choosing Uninstall a program, and then clicking on Turn Windows features on and off. You can turn off Remote Differential Compression, Tablet PC components, DFS replication service, Windows Fax & Scan, Windows Meeting Space, and lots more.

81. Install a free or commercial anti-virus program to help protect against viruses, etc. Make sure to use an anti-virus program that does not hog up all of your computer resources.

82. Completely uninstall programs and applications using a program like Revo Uninstaller. It will get rid of remnants left behind by normal uninstalls.

83. If you know what you are doing, you can install several hard drives into your machine and set them up in RAID 0, RAID 5, or other RAID configurations.

84. If you are using USB 1.0 ports, upgrade to 2.0. If you have a Firewire port, try to use that instead of a USB port since Firewire is faster than USB right now.

85. Remove the drivers for all old devices that may be hidden in Device Manager that you no longer use.

86. A more extreme option is to choose a faster operating system. If you find Vista to be slow, go with Windows XP. Switching to Mac or Linux is also an option.

87. One of the easiest ways to speed up your PC is to simply reformat it. Of course, you want to backup your data, but it is the best way to get your computer back to peak performance.

88. Speed up Internet browsing in IE by increasing the number of max connections per server in the registry.

89. If you use uTorrent to download torrents, you can increase the download speeds by tweaking the settings.

90. If you have a desktop background, make sure it’s a small and simple bitmap image rather than a fancy picture off the Internet. The best is to find a really small texture and to tile it.

91. For the Virtual Memory setting in Windows (right-click on My Computer, Properties, Advanced, Performance Settings, Advanced, Virtual Memory), make sure the MIN and MAX are both the same number.

92. If you search on Google a lot or Wikipedia, you can do it much faster on Vista by adding them to the Vista Start Menu Instant Search box.

93. If you have a custom built computer or a PC that was previously used, make sure to check the BIOS for optimal settings such as enabled CPU caches, correctly set IDE/SATA data transfer modes, memory timings, etc. You can also enable Fast/Quick boot if you have that option.

94. If you have a SCSI drive, make sure the write cache is enabled. You can do so by opening the properties of the SCSI drive in Windows.

95. If you have a machine with an older network card, make sure to enable the onboard processor for the network card, which will offload tasks from the CPU.

96. If you are using Windows Vista, you can disable the Welcome Center splash screen that always pops up.

97. If you already have anti-spyware software installed, turn off Windows Defender protection.

98. If you are running a 32-bit version of Windows and have 4GB of RAM or more, you can force Windows to see and use all of the RAM by enabling PAE.
99. Many optimizations can automatically be done with tools like CCleaner (free) or TuneUp Utilities (not free).
100. Get a solid state disk (SSD) in addition to your hard drive. Install your operating system onto that SSD, and you won't notice loading times anymore. (best speed tweak ever!)

How to Clear Java and Flash cache

Clear Java Cache

Clearing the Java Plug-in cache forces the browser to load the latest versions of web pages and programs, and ensures that all traces of your ISP given IP is removed.
Be sure to also use CCleaner to clear all kinds of cache and trackable data.

To clear the Java Plug-in cache: Click Start > Control Panel. Double-click the Java icon in the control panel. The Java Control Panel appears. Click Settings under Temporary Internet Files. The Temporary Files Settings dialog box appears.
Click Delete Files. The Delete Temporary Files dialog box appears.
Click OK on Delete Temporary Files window. *Note:* This deletes all the Downloaded Applications and Applets from the cache. Click OK on Temporary Files Settings window. *Note:* If you want to delete a specific application and applet from the cache, click on View Application and View Applet options respectively

Clear Adobe Flash Cache

Much like Java, forces the browser to load the latest versions of webpages and programs,
and ensures that all traces of your ISP given IP is removed.

1. To get started, simply visit this page. This will take you to the Settings Manager for the Flash Player. It should also take you directly to the Website Storage Settings section. If it doesn’t, simply click the Website Storage Settings button (see screenshot on the right) to bring that section up. Towards the bottom of that window, you’ll see a section with a list of all the sites that have left some piece of Flash on your computer.
2. We want to delete all of the sites that Flash has saved – click the Delete all sites button.
3. You’ll be prompted to confirm this action. Click Confirm.
4. And now your computer is free of the history of sites that you have visted with Flash content. That’s it! It is of course important to note that the next time you visit a site that you had previously deleted, it will re-appear in you Flash history list.

Bypassing VPN on per IP basis DD-WRT

Once a router is connected to HMA OpenVPN every device using that connection goes through the tunnel. If you want to filter devices to connect via the ISP's IP address, do this:

Transient solution

A- Go to ADMINISTRATION - COMMANDS - COMMAND SHELL and get the value of wan_gateway running this command: nvram get wan_gateway
B- Run a couple more commands:
ip route add default via (what you got in A) table 10 e. g. ip route add default via 173.234.216.1 table 10
ip rule add from (IP address you want to filter) table 10 e. g. ip rule add from 192.168.1.10 table 10

Permanent solution that survives reboots

1. Do the 4 Easy Steps Tutorial (http://forum.hidemya...ial/#entry16142) or run the HMA auto-installer (http://wiki.hidemyas...WRT_and_OpenWRT)

2. Go to ADMINISTRATION - COMMANDS - COMMAND SHELL and create a nvram variable wich will contain a list of the IP Addresses you want to filter, like this:

nvram set no_vpn_lst="192.168.1.11 192.168.1.12 192.168.1.13 "
nvram commit

As you can see, there's a space between every IP address, and a final space before the closing quotation mark. Customize the list to match the IP addresses you want to filter taking care of using the aforementioned spaces.

3. Download a script from http://pastebin.com/....php?i=nttcdVX3

4. Copy the script contents, paste to COMMANDS - COMMAND SHELL and click Save Custom Script

5. Reboot

6. That's it. Now the devices on your list will be routed outside the OpenVPN tunnel.

To set up static IP addresses these links tell you how (IT IS SAFE TO SKIP PORT FORWARDING SECTION, IT IS NOT NECESSARY, UNLESS YOU NEED IT OF COURSE).

http://www.dd-wrt.co...php/Static_DHCP

http://www.howtogeek...-dd-wrt-router/

How to Setup Tomato L2TP

Tomato L2TP Setup

Jump to: navigation, search

Flashing instructions with ASUS RT-N16

There is an official tutorial for installing Tomato firmware on Asus routers: http://tomatousb.org/tut:installing-on-asus-rt-n16
And below you'll find usermade instructions for this purpose:

At this point you still have the original firmware on your router installed.
First you need to install the DD-WRT firmware to be able to flash Tomato firmware later.
E.g. install dd-wrt.v24-15778_NEWD-2_K2.6_mini_RT-N16.trx using the webconfiguration of the router.
Now your router is flashed with DD-WRT firmware.
Now do a hard reset (30-30-30).
Change the .trx suffix [tomato-K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR2-beta-vpn3.6.trx] to .bin [tomato-K26USB-1.28.9054MIPSR2-beta-vpn3.6.bin].
Use the DD-WRT webconfiguration to flash the Tomato Firmware onto the router.
Do a hard reset (30-30-30)
Perform a thorough NVRAM erase (Administration > Configuration: Restore Default Configuration) by selecting [Erase all data in NVRAM memory (thorough)]. Make sure to click OK.
Set the routers IP address similar to your gateway router/DSL modem (e.g. if gateway is 192.168.0.1, set the router to 192.168.0.2 or 192.168.1.1) (Basic > Network: LAN)
Set the IP Address Range accordingly.
Click Save.
Click Reboot.

Note: You must first install DD-WRT firmware before you can flash Tomato firmware. Flashing Tomato firmware over a router original firmware will most likely not work.

VPN configuration

Go to the Tomato routers web configuration, usually by typing 192.168.1.1 in your browser

Now in the menu, go to Basic / Network

Here, please set:

Type: L2TP
Username: Your VPN account username
Password: Your PPTP password (not account password. Get the PPTP password in the VPN control panel under "PPTP servers")
L2TP Server: The L2TP server IPs can be found @ http://hidemyass.com/vpn-config/l2tp/
Use DHCP: Check
Use Default Gateway on Remote Network: Check
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

Options: Leave blank
Connect mode: Keep alive
Check Interval: 30
MTU: Manual – 1460

After you have entered the settings from above hit “Save”.

The router will apply the settings and you will be connected to VPN.

You can always check if your IP has changed at http://whatismyipaddress.com/

HideMyAss VPN