FairPoint network slowdown? Switch your DNS.

One of the many problems of using FairPoint as your ISP is that their DNS system is horribly managed.  This often causes unreasonably long waits while a name resolves and can even cause some web pages to break as the browser tries to load assets from many different addresses.  If switching ISPs isn’t a viable solution, one workaround is to use another DNS provider.  There are many alternatives; in the past I’ve used OpenDNS, which was better than FairPoint’s but still occasionally had glitches (in addition to other potential concerns) and I’ve just started using Google’s Public DNS, which seems pretty good so far.  Simple tip:  if your computer(s) connect through a router, which they probably do, you should make the DNS change in the router’s control panel rather than on each machine.